HOSE (a word common to many Teutonic languages; cf. Dutch, hoos, stocking, Ger. Hose, breeches, tights; the ultimate origin is unknown), the name of an article of dress, used as a covering for the leg and foot. The word has been used for various forms of a long stocking covering both the foot and leg (see Hosiery), and this is the usual modern sense. But it also formerly meant a kind of gaiter covering the leg from the knee to the ankle only, of the long tight covering for the whole of the lower limbs, and later of the short puffed or slashed breeches worn with the doublet—at this period, from the early part of the 16th century onwards, comes the distinction between the “hose” or “trunk hose” and the stocking (see Costume). The term is applied to certain objects resembling such a covering, as in its application to flexible rubber or canvas piping used for conveying water (see Hosepipe), and in botany, to the “sheath” covering, e.g. the ear of corn. The term “hose-in-hose” is thus used in botany for a flower in which the corolla has become doubled, as though a second were inserted in the throat of the first; it occurs sometimes in the primrose.