necropants

/ˈnɛkɹoʊˌpænts/

necropants means A pair of pants made from the skin of the lower half (below the waist) of a dead man, used by medieval Icelandic sorcerers to obtain money. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 92 out of 100.

necropants is pronounced /ˈnɛkɹoʊˌpænts/.

Why “necropants” is a great word

A pair of trousers fashioned from the flayed skin of a human corpse from the waist down, intended as a talisman in Icelandic folk magic to generate inexhaustible wealth. Its name is a modern calque of the Icelandic nábrók, from ná- (“corpse”) and brók (“breeches”), built on the Greek nekrós for the dead. Unlike “trousers,” a mundane garment of wool or linen, or a “relic,” a sacred fragment preserved for veneration, necropants are a wholly profane apparatus of raw, transactional sorcery. It is the cold, leathery drape against living thighs, the grotesque pouch where a stolen coin must be placed to seed more, and the silent companion that will not decay so long as its wearer outlives the donor—a perverse testament to the bleak arithmetic where desperation measures life not in years, but in currency.

Etymology

From necro- + pants, a calque of Icelandic nábrók.

noun

A pair of pants made from the skin of the lower half (below the waist) of a dead man, used by medieval Icelandic sorcerers to obtain money.“Most of the occult practices they were accused of were simply old Viking traditions, though the necropants (see right) and grimoires (magic books) on display were proof enough for the local witch-hunters.”