overalls
- 1Loose pants with a bib front that covers the chest and straps that cross over the shoulders, often linked with farm work.
Like a pair of pants joined to an apron front and held up over the shoulders.
He stuffed a wrench into the front pocket of his overalls and crawled under the tractor.
The toddler tripped over the cuffs of her too-long overalls.
Similardungarees
Note
Work clothes worn hard enough to become a yardstick. Joseph C. Lincoln's Mr. Pratt's Patients (1913) describes a concertina bellows "patched in more places than a cranberry picker's overalls." This is the everyday meaning in the US, Canada and Australia. British speakers call the garment dungarees, because for them the word points to the protective outer garment.
- 2A loose protective garment pulled on over everyday clothes to keep them clean or safe from damage.
Like an outer shell that takes all the dirt and paint so your good clothes stay clean.
Factory staff slipped on overalls before starting work on the assembly line.
She pulled a pair of overalls over her dress before she began decorating the hallway.
Similarcoveralls
Note
In British English this is the protective layer pulled on over ordinary clothes for factory work or decorating. Across the Atlantic the same word usually means bibbed work pants, so the regional split matters. Britain also says boiler suit, and Australia and Canada say coveralls. The word is plural in form even for a single garment: a pair of overalls, and her overalls are hanging up.
- 3Pants traditionally worn by cavalry as part of their uniform.
Like formal riding pants that became a fixed part of a regiment's dress uniform.
At the mess dinner, the young lieutenant's overalls fit snugly to the ankle.
The tailor let out the seams on a pair of overalls for the new squadron commander.
Note
A piece of British regimental vocabulary. In cavalry uniform, overalls are dress trousers rather than protective work wear, so a lieutenant's overalls at a mess dinner are part of his formal kit. Outside military usage the word reverts to the protective garment, which can make a mention of an officer's overalls sound oddly humble to a civilian reader.
- 4Plural of overall.
The laundry returned the cleaned overalls folded and pressed.
Spare overalls hung in the locker room for new staff.
Note
Only the noun takes this plural. Overall as an adjective (all-encompassing) or as an adverb (generally, on the whole) never adds an -s. Within the noun, the singular also behaves differently by region. British English speaks freely of an overall, one protective garment. American usage keeps the bibbed garment in the plural, so a single item is a pair of overalls.
overalls is a form of overall
overall, noun: A work garment with a built-in chest panel held up by shoulder straps, worn for manual labor. Full entry
- Forms
- overalloveralls plural
- Spelling
- overall → overalls: add -s
Practice
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