Slops

A term used in the singular from the Middle Ages to refer to many different kinds of loose-fitting garments: in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a magic bag or a cassock, jacket, mantle or cloak, gown or overdress, also a slipper. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth century slops, in the plural, were the full trunk hose or wide, baggy breeches of the time; one leg of such hose was called a slop (see Hose). The term was also especially applied in the seventeenth century to sailors' loose breeches which were ready-made from inferior quality material. From this slops came to designate particularly cheap, ready-made garments of any type. Spanish slops were the trunk hose made fashionable in Spain in the second half of the sixteenth century, Dutch slops, the Dutch or German pluderhosen of these years and the early seventeenth century, while small slops were plainer, less full breeches open at the knee.

Cannons, canons, canions In the second half of the sixteenth century these were tube-like breeches, worn by men, tightly-fitting over the thigh and extending from the lower edge of the short trunk hose to the knee. Cannons were generally made of a different material and pattern from either the trunk hose or the stocking and in the 1570s and 1580s could be ornately embroidered in coloured silks, gold or silver thread. In the seventeenth century, especially in the 1660s when petticoat breeches were fashionable, deep linen or lace flounces were attached to the lower end of the cannons, appearing to act as a full, ruffled extension of the rhine- graves themselves. This was a fashion to be seen in France and England but especially in Holland and Germany.