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What do you call the part of the human body that's covered by the underwear? I was thinking of using "bottom-half", but that also includes the leg, so I thought "bottom-half of the trunk", but it includes the navel, so I am not sure what word I can use and I am not even sure if there's a word for it.

For example:

The ___ was hidden by his underwear.

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    There are a great number of words, some specific to the genders, and most are appropriate to specific contexts and registers. And also periods: in some eras and places, the bottom underwear does cover the navel. What sort of sentence did you want to write?
    – jonathanjo
    May 14, 2019 at 14:17

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This may depend on what variety of English you use. In the USA brand, I think you can just call it someone's "bottom". "Backside" or "rear end" is just the buttocks, but I think "bottom" could be understood to include the whole region.

There is another word which unfortunately carries an overtone of bashful silliness with it. That is "nether region(s)". It's kind of pretend-prudish and sounds a little like an old fashioned circumlocution, but it really exactly coincides with the parts of the body you want to name.

I think you sometimes find this expression in comical writing, even though, by itself, it isn't funny.

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    Being from USA, all of those work as synecdoche. "Rump", "posterior", or any synonym would be understood, to varying degrees of comic effect. You could even refer to bits in the front, but mostly just for male subjects (and it is more crude) "Cover your ass" is really a pretty pertinent phrase, despite it also having a figurative meaning. May 14, 2019 at 15:10
  • Why not include the front and say “pelvis”?
    – ColleenV
    May 14, 2019 at 15:32
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If you mean the very bottom of the underwear (as in the lowest point covered by a pair of breifs on a male (the gender indicated by your sentence example), that would be the patch of skin between the base of the scrotum and the beginning of the arsecrack. This area has in modern vernacular American english been assigned the name "taint". A slightly older and more crude name was "chode", which seems to have fallen out of favour lately.

Otherwise the term "underside" is often used euphemistically when referring to the area that includes the whole of the pelvic region, including the Crotch and buttocks. If euphemism is not desired, it would seem to be most common to refer to either the crotch or buttocks by any one of the many available monikers, or a specific part thereof (such as genitals or a specific part thereof such as gonads, the butt as a whole or a specific part thereof such as the associated oriface), whichever is most relevant to the situation you are trying to describe.

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