Fly as in what birds and aeroplanes do, fly as in the insects, or fly as in “your fly is down”?

edit: I mean the word fly (as in its use in language), not the act of flying!

  • DagwoodIII@piefed.socialEnglish
    13·
    3 days ago

    The term “fly” in the context of pants riginates from the Old English word “flowan,” meaning to flow. It refers to the piece of fabric that covers the zipper, not the zipper itself. The term gained popularity in the 19th century when tailors began using it to describe a flap of cloth attached at one end to cover an opening in a garment. This usage was particularly noted for its association with the right side of men’s trousers, distinguishing it from women’s garments, which may have different openings

    edit =from the interwebs, not my words

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      3 days ago

      I’ll bet you this also has something to do with the terminology for the rain fly on a tent, most of which have the same kind of flap covering the zippers and/or openings.

        • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          Every rain fly on pretty much every modern tent has multiple zippers. Full coverage flies (flys?) are now the norm and these require some way to open them in order to let you in and out of the tent, which is inevitably a zipper. Even before this in the canvas tent era, closures may have been done with buttons rather than zippers but the opening points still had fold-over flaps to keep rainwater out, similar in construction to the ones on your pants.

          I’ve only ever owned one tent in my life that did not have a full coverage fly and thus did not require any hardware on the fly itself. It still had folded over gusset flaps on it in various places, and that tent was also crap and was not designed to withstand weather.

          If you are making your own “fly” out of a tarp or similar, that’s different.

          • village604@adultswim.fanEnglish
            1·
            2 days ago

            I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Looking up camping tents, the vast majority have the classic pitched rain fly.

            But regardless, that style of rain fly is pretty new, so it’s irrelevant to the reason they were named flies in the first place. I doubt it was common for tents to even have zippers when the term rain fly was coined.

            Edit: Looking into it further, the term rain fly was coined before the term fly was used to describe the fabric covering the zipper. It looks like calling the fabric covering the zipper a fly came from using fly to describe the fabric covering a tent.