Hehe! I'm pretty much on the same page as Angie on this apart from swimsuits instead of bathing suit. I'm chuckling at Summer's idea of booties. Yes absolutely...little babies knitted shoes!

HAH. I'm chuckling at "booties" too.

Summer reminded me of another - Purse. A Purse, to me, is a Wallet. I say Bag. High five to you and Diane.

GOOD GRIEF. Wife Beater is the very worse garment term. It should be banned.

My gosh! I haven't heard gumboots in forever! My dad always said gumboots. But we wore duck shoes for rain... So I don't know how he came up with so many opportunities to say gumboots...

Angie -- agreed. Wife beater is dreadful. Descriptive, though.

Rachy -- I head gumboots from time to time around here, although rain boots would be more common. Sadly, no one uses Wellies. What are duck shoes?

These are ducks (shown below). Funny, LL Bean is calling them gumshoes. I don't recall them doing that before.

Oh this thread is so helpful, a quick tutorial in American! I think gumshoes came about from being rubber (gum) shoes or boots.

And I have always wanted to ask, is it right that you'd put panties (knickers or pants to me) on to go to bed in? Under a big tshrtvor nightdress?

Here one would wear a nightdress or pyjamas but with nothing underneath, though a lot of adults, like me, wear nothing at all in bed, other slobby types would just take off their trousers and get into bed with T-shirt, socks and underpants on! Yuk!

Earlier someone mentioned the teeth straighteners, here they'd be called braces, the same as suspenders for trousers.
There were some early knee length trousers still used by the hunting shooting fishing folks that were known as knickerbockers, now called plus fours though I have no idea why.
Brogues would have perforations in their patterning.
Vive la difference!

I don't sleep naked because our kids sometimes crawl into bed for a morning cuddle when I sleep in on the weekend. Also, I don't fancy running out of the house starkers in the event of a fire.

As for whether you put on underpants with your sleepwear -- that depends on the person!

Languages evolve, and when the speakers don't live in the same area but speak the "same" language, the language evolves in different ways. In the US, for instance, our English is actually a really good mishmash of lots of different languages. The word Vest for instance comes to us via Latin, then Italian & finally French before becoming our American English word Vest.

The word Gilet actually means a sleeveless padded jacket (not exactly the same as what we think of as a vest in the US) and it comes from via Turkish, then Spanish & finally French again before coming to English.

Can you tell I'm a word geek?

And don't even get me started on regional American English. In college, I worked on the DARE. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.....al_English

Good point, kirstjen. Truth be told, up until the recent past I've sort of thought of gillets and waistcoats and vests as types in a category called 'Vest.' But I've sort of come to accept the free for all.

I rarely rarely hear anyone say 'singlet,' but I do know the term somehow. I hear tank/tank top all the time. 'Wife beater' is crude, but I find it crystal clear in meaning.