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Did people in the past wear super loose pants that could fit 2 people in there or something? Didn't people back then remove their pants before doing it? Did they have some sort of ritual where they would wear the other person's pants before doing it?
Where does the expression come from? It doesn't make much sense to me.
"Get into someone's pants" suggests a physical intimacy typical of sexual activities:
Pants as a methapor for "dirty" activities has been used in earlier idiomatic expression such as:
- To be caught with (one's) pants down "discovered in an embarrassing condition" is from 1932.
get in(to) someone’s pants appears to be an extension of that methaphorical usage which became popular from the '60s (see Ngram)
- in. to manage to copulate with a certain female; to seduce a female. (Usually objectionable.) Are you sure you don’t just want to get into my pants?
Ngram: get into my pants, get into her pants
The The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English shows an early usage by George Mandel in Flee the Angry Stranger (1952):
I have been in more guys' pants than you could count.
I feel like this is a troll, but here we go.
If you were to put your hand in someone's pants, meaning "underwear", you could say that you had "got into their pants" - you've got a part of you into their pants, at least. The putting of one's hand inside another's pants (while they are wearing them) is a common part of foreplay, a precursor to sex.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreplay
Hence we could say that we'd got into someone's pants. There's also a possible metaphor in which the pants represent a barrier to sexual intimacy, so you're saying that you've got past their innermost barrier to sexual intimacy, ie that, again, you've had sex with them.
You can be "in" something without all of you being completely inside it.
(In the context of this question, that sounds a bit wrong, but to be clear I'm talking about the pants.)
"Go in that drawer and get me the scissors." This doesn't mean that the drawer is the size of a room. It means you're putting your hand in there. Your hand is in the drawer, so you can say that you are in the drawer. Same with the pants.
"He got into my safe and took my money." Again, this doesn't mean that the safe is the size of a room. Same with the pants.
It's a figure of speech and shouldn't be taken literally. Even if you do take it literally, "in" or "into" doesn't always literally mean that you're completely inside something.
