Grab your murses, mankini's, and manties!

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The fashion industry has its knickers in a twist over "manties."

A contraction of "man" and "panties," the wordplay is meant to describe certain undergarments for males.

It's part of a special lexicon that has emerged, over the past decade, as a sort of shorthand for men's fashion. Men can also wear "mandals" (male sandals), "murses" (purses), "mantyhose" (pantyhose) and "mankinis" (swimsuit variants)—though not necessarily all at the same time.

At first, the neologisms were a kind of secret language among the fashion industry, etymologists say. Yet they're going mainstream. Now, editors of the prestigious Oxford English Dictionary are tracking them for possible inclusion.

The men's collection shows at New York Fashion Week, which kicks off Thursday, could give rise to more neologisms. Fashion editors often lack the words to describe wacky runway concoctions.

At Hermès' women's fashion collection in March, for example, "poots" was coined to identify a pair of leather pants that segue into boots.

But not everyone is thrilled about the emerging vocabulary. Some fashion types complain that it's emasculating.

"Manties is pretty high on the repellent meter," says Glenn O'Brien, author of "How To Be A Man" and a style advice columnist at GQ magazine.

Ross McCammon, an editor at Esquire who oversees the men's magazine's Vocabulary column, says, "We're interested in pushing the language forward and don't think there's a new way to use 'man' or 'bro'." Such prefixes help to promote a "cartoonish idea of men," he says.

The invention of new words to describe men's fashion is a symptom of the recent boom in the men's fashion industry. The sector is proving particularly resilient to economic turbulence: During the first half of this year, sales of men's apparel in the U.S. rose 4.6% while women's fell 0.8%, according to market researcher NPD Group.

Mewelry (that's jewelry for men, not for cats) is also on the rise. Pinky rings have met their match in wristbands. They come in leather from Tod's—a favorite of bankers—and woven versions in string and cotton from Burkman Bros.

Then there are mandals—open-toed shoes that are more formal and structured than flip-flops. President Barack Obama was spotted in a black pair last summer. Yet the presidential footgear was immediately panned by style watchers. "They're ugly," declared fashion/celebrity blog Jezebel. Other online critics were squeamish over seeing Mr. Obama's toes.

Most designers wouldn't dream of using the new descriptors. "If it makes you happy to wear sandals, go for it—but I wouldn't call them mandals," says Umit Benan, the winner of the inaugural "Who Is On Next?" Italian competition for up-and-coming men's wear designers.

Linguists see the new vocabulary as an emancipation of sorts of men's fashion. And they're taking it seriously.

In the same way that the "e-" prefix was added to words such as store and bank to designate their online existence, "man" is used to describe the masculine version of inherently feminine objects, says Erin McKean, the founder of Wordnik.com, a website for word enthusiasts.

The rise of men's fashion, and its corresponding lexicon, goes back to the birth of the term metrosexual in the 1990s. Used to describe a man who is concerned with his appearance, it ushered in a generation of pop culture stars like Justin Timberlake, Joe Jonas and Kanye West who are praised, not ridiculed, for their style choices.

"Suddenly, there's this way of talking about [men's appearance] which could occasionally be complimentary," says Cynthia Miller, a lecturer on popular culture at Emerson College in Boston. "It became part of the popular consciousness."

That didn't make men's garment choices immune to humor, she notes. In a 1995 "Seinfeld" episode, the character Kramer invents a contraption called a "bro" or "manssiere" as a potential remedy for heavy-chested males. More recently, manties were spoofed on "Saturday Night Live."

A few expressions deal with the less glamorous side of fashion. Some male models are said to suffer from "manorexia." Several words describe grooming more than fashion, such as "guyliner" (eyeliner for guys) and "manscaping" (the removal of hair from men's limbs and loins).

In the past decade, manbag has become particularly common—both as a product and as a word. Department store chain Macy's has carved out space for manbags in some of its biggest stores, doubling its selection over the past year. Macy's men's fashion director Durand Guion says pockets just don't suffice for carrying an iPod, iPad and cellphone.

But he would never call the things manbags—or murses. "I don't like terms that mock this trend," Mr. Guion says. "I like terms that define the specific bag: messenger, gym, tote, carryall, backpack, portfolio, duffel."

The folks over at Oxford English Dictionary take a different view. They gave "manbag" a stamp of approval five years ago—the only new men's fashion term to receive the distinction. Fiona McPherson, the dictionary's senior editor for new words, said manbag had met the test of time. She traced the word's first use back to 1968.

Ms. McPherson said the OED requires "evidence of a word's usage over a 10-year period, before considering it for inclusion" in its editions. That criteria so far disqualifies a synonym for manbag, murse, as well as mankini, mandals and manties. None of them go back further than a decade, she said.

To the consternation of the fashion industry, the new terms are redefining fashion faux pas. The British beach town of Newquay has witnessed a rise in mankini violations, according to chief of Newquay Police Ian Drummond-Smith. This summer, for example, a man was reprimanded on an English beach for wearing a thong-like suit with a halter strap similar to the one made famous by Borat, the fictional Kazak journalist.

Mr. Drummond-Smith said the slinky one-piece breached Britain's Section 5 of Public Order Act 1986, "which prohibits the display of items likely to cause harassment, alarm & distress."