Going to wear your Full Trouser?

[OC Richard]

I think I've mentioned this before, but I can't find the old thread.

My old Pipe Major, who kept very busy piping at weddings and funerals, would be amused, even exasperated, when a client would ask if he was "going to wear his Full Kilt".

"One of these days", he would say, "I'm going to tell one of these people 'actually for your event I was thinking about wearing my Half Kilt' just to see what they say."

In trying to explain it to a musician friend (non-piper who does orchestra gigs) I said "what if somebody hired you for a gig and asked you to wear your Full Trouser? What would you think? What would you say?"

A term like "full kilt" wouldn't exist in a vacuum; there must be degrees of kilt to be distinguished. Most likely there would be a "half kilt". Perhaps a "3/4 kilt" as well.

Of course it's all nonsense. There's no more a Half Kilt than there is a Half Trouser.

But where did the term Full Kilt come from? It's not super common, but it's not rare either. I would say that I get asked to wear my Full Kilt around once a year.

There are analogies, there are other bogus fanciful terms that The General Public use.

I work at Disneyland and visitors have a talent for generating new names for things in the Park. I would say that less than half of the tourists call The Haunted Mansion by its name. Almost no one called The Main Street Electrical Parade by its name (for some unknown reason everyone called it the "electric light parade").