close your zipper!

How do you say when you notice some guy's trousers' zipper is open?
Do you say "Close your zipper!" or "Examine your zipper" or just "zip it up"?

keannu said:

How do you say when you notice some guy's trousers' zipper is open?
Do you say "Close your zipper!" or "Examine your zipper" or just "zip it up"?

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In BrE:

Your flies are undone.
You're flying low.

By the way, it doesn't have to be a guy whose zip is undone. ;-)

emsr2d2 said:

In BrE:

Your flies are undone.
You're flying low.

By the way, it doesn't have to be a guy whose zip is undone. ;-)

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Can you explain what these two sentences imply? Literally, they make little sense to me.

keannu said:

Can you explain what these two sentences imply? Literally, they make little sense to me.

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OK, in BrE, the zip area on a pair of trousers or jeans is known as the "fly" or "flies".

Fly (clothing) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Undone" means "not done up" or "not zipped up" (not closed).

"You're flying low" is not quite slang, but certainly idiomatic. It's a sort of pun on the word "fly" (as above). If a plane is flying low, then it's very close to the ground. In the same way, the little metal toggle on the zip is closer to the ground than it should be, because it hasn't been pulled up to the top.

In AmE we would say that your fly is open. Or your zipper's down.

I have a feeling that in BrE it was originally just "Your fly's undone" or "Your fly's open" but at some point "fly's" was turned into (misheard as?) "flies" which is why the "are" was added.

emsr2d2 said:

I have a feeling that in BrE it was originally just "Your fly's undone" or "Your fly's open" but at some point "fly's" was turned into (misheard as?) "flies" which is why the "are" was added.

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That sounds quite possible, because I've never seen or heard "Your flies are undone."