alt Hacker NewsThere's also different definitions of waistline size. Pant sizes "lie" because historically most pants sat further up your waist, now that many of them sit on your hips, they give you a measurement as if they were still sitting higher up so you can compare between the fits with the same number.
Really the only bulletproof solution here is to just go try them on in store and see which fits best.
Pants sizes also lie because they don’t take into account the rise necessary to provide horizontal waistline on women with an angle at their rear waist-to-hip incline. A 14 low-rise waist that flops down at a thirty degree tilt in the front is a worse fit than a 12 mid-rise waist that doesn’t, for example.