jorts

Jorts is a blend of the words jeans and shorts. While jean shorts became a popular clothing item in the 1960s, the term jorts doesn’t appear until the 1990s.

Listen, many people wear jean shorts. But, jorts specifically get made fun of in popular culture as white, hillbilly, dorky, or something your dad might wear when cutting the lawn with his t-shirt tucked in—or when snow-blowing with his shirt off, as one Wisconsin dad went viral doing in 2018.

Jorts have been the punchline in popular media, too. In a 2014 episode of the cartoon Adventure Time, one character complains: “You still owe me a pair of jorts!” In the 2016 action comedy Central Intelligence, Kevin Hart’s character jokes: “You were like Jason Bourne, man, but with jorts!” And, then there’s Tobias from Arrested Development. He’s a never nude … and always sporting those jorts!

Jean shorts are more fashionable among women, and as such usually go by other names, like cutoffs or the higher, tighter Daisy Dukes.

As with all things in fashion, what’s unhip becomes cool again. US hipsters reclaimed shorts, especially of the skinny variety, in the 2010s. Celebrity Kendall Jenner notably wore jorts on the red carpet of the Cannes Film Festival in 2017, the same year emo-rockers Mom Jeans. even wrote a song called “Jorts.”