clothes on one's back
English
[edit]Noun
[edit]clothes on one's back pl (plural only)
- The clothes that one is currently wearing, regarded as basic possessions.
- 1858, R M Ballantyne, The Coral Island:
- In addition to these articles we had a little bit of tinder, and the clothes on our backs. These last were as follows:— Each of us had on a pair of stout canvass trousers, and a pair of sailors’ thick shoes. Jack wore a red flannel shirt, a blue jacket, and a red Kilmarnock bonnet or night-cap, besides a pair of worsted socks, and a cotton pocket-handkerchief, with sixteen portraits of Lord Nelson printed on it, and a union Jack in the middle.