Galluses
A pair of braces - the straps that hold a man's trousers up from the shoulders. Always plural, always for a single pair, and now mostly unheard outside older speakers.
Etymology
From 'gallows', the hanging structure - not the noose - on the homely logic that braces hang a pair of trousers up. The plural 'galluses' / 'gallowses' is well attested in Scots from at least 1819, with related senses recorded earlier (carriage suspension straps in 1705). The word travelled into Ulster Scots intact and from there into wider Hiberno-English, before being squeezed out by 'braces' in the twentieth century.
In a sentence
The captain... wi' his thooms stuck in his gallowses. - W. D. Latto, Fife, 1864 (DSL)
Galluses were braces, which we wore if we were unlucky. - Christopher Rush, Fife, 1985 (DSL)
Historical notes
Galluses lost ground to 'braces' through the twentieth century as ready-made suits replaced bespoke trousers and elastic waistbands removed the need for shoulder straps altogether. Surviving usage is concentrated among older men in Ulster - a working word for a working garment, kept alive in houses where the trousers still need holding up the old way. Christopher Rush captured the sense in 1985: 'galluses were braces, which we wore if we were unlucky.'
Sources
- Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL), entry GALLOWSES n.pl. · dictionary
- Macafee, Caroline. Concise Ulster Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 1996. · dictionary