pants off, the

Idioms and Phrases

This phrase is used to intensify the meaning of verbs such as bore or charm or kid or scare or talk . For example, That speech bored the pants off us , or It was a real tornado and scared the pants off me . Playwright Eugene O'Neill used it in Ah, Wilderness! (1933): “I tell you, you scared the pants off him,” and Evelyn Waugh, in A Handful of Dust (1934), had a variation, “She bores my pants off.” [ Colloquial ; early 1900s] Also see bore to death ; beat the pants off .