Meanings
knicks1
- UKcolloquialpluralplural onlyKnickers.
Despite all the attention focused on Beth, when Gossip performs, they are without doubt a band: Nathan and Hannah Billie, the drummer, being just as cartoon charismatic as Beth herself, though perhaps less likely to strip to their knicks and dive-bomb the crowd.
2009 July 5, Miranda Sawyer, “Everything that you think is weird is normal to me”, in The Observer1 more example
“People never notice you when you are looking half- decent. During the sales I was in a communal changing room and was stripped down to my knicks — and not my best car accident knickers either — when a woman said, ‘Aren’t you that woman off the telly?’ and everyone stared.”
2003 February 9, “The Greenham Common girl done good”, in The Times - pluralplural onlycyclingLycra pants (usually short) used by cyclists.
Knicks2
- The New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association, formerly the New York Knickerbockers of the Basketball Association of America.
Origin
Knicks · proper noun
From the fictional Diedrich Knickerbocker, a pseudonym of Washington Irving.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
knicks. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/knicks
“knicks.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/knicks. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “knicks,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/knicks.
Source: knicks on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.