Meaning of clothes on one's back | Babel Free

Definitions

The clothes that one is currently wearing, regarded as basic possessions.

plural, plural-only

Examples

“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.”

CEFR level