Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A soft felt hat with a deeply creased crown.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A foot: from the beautiful left foot of the heroine of Du Maurier's story ‘Trilby,’ of which it was said that there was only one in Paris to match it and that was Trilby's other foot.
Wiktionary
- n. A narrow-brimmed felt hat.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a hat made of felt with a creased crown
- n. singer in a novel by George du Maurier who was under the control of the hypnotist Svengali
Etymologies
- After the novel Trilby by George du Maurier (because such a hat was worn in the original London stage production based on the novel).
Examples
“Racegoers in trilby's, murderers with torsos in cabin trunks.”
“Most popular is our short-brimmed trilby, which is a young fashion take on a regular trilby.”
“Note how Indy's has a wider brim, unlike the one on the left The one on the left is more like a trilby, which is essentially a fedora with a narrower brim.”
“On my first visit to Manila alter the American occupation I was struck to see Chinese in the streets wearing the pigtail down their backs, and dressed in nicely-cut semi-European patrol-jacket costumes of cloth or washing-stuffs, with straw or felt "trilby" hats.”
“To consummate the baptism of his great protagonist in the trilby hat, Raymond Chandler decided on the fancy of combining the Christian name of the highest-scoring schoolboy batsman of the winning house in the previous summer's Dulwich cricket – and so it came to pass that the batsman was "Philip" and the house was "Marlowe", and thus was leafy south London in a blink translated into the mean streets of America.”
The Guardian: From Jeeves to Herriot: all creatures great and sporty | Frank Keating
“How fitting, then, that as I walked under the railway bridge, a man with a narrow beard wearing a trilby hat walked past me in the opposite direction.”
The Guardian: Running London: Leg 17 - Knightsbridge to Herne Hill
“Men: Ms. Farr urges: "No big cargo shorts and logo tees or straw pork pies or trilby hats," a shorter-brimmed fedora.”
“Glummer still was the plight of tiny homosexual Ben Mitchell, whose response to being caught kissing hooded squeeze Duncan was to festoon the Square with swirling wreaths of misspelled accusations "BIGGOT" and make Patrick's trilby spin with threats of the "watch it, mister!" genus.”
“Joe worked on the railways as a goods guard, was incurably cheerful, always wore a trilby, taught himself French and Esperanto, and was a communist.”
The Guardian: Stalin Ate My Homework by Alexei Sayle - review
“Geoffrey Rush, for reasons that I suspect will remain opaque, is wearing a trilby.”
The Guardian: Live blog: The Golden Globes – live! | Hadley Freeman
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘trilby’.
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Chap stickies
Words associated with Chappism.
chap, brideshead revisited, jeeves, woosterian, rough shag, spigot, anarcho-dandyism, chumrade, chapette, wing-backed armchair, snood, boogie-woogie and 26 more...
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A Time of Gifts
lambent, gonfalon, ait, eyrie, haberdashery, belfry, capstan, spinney, barbican, hobnail, wharf, waterlogged and 64 more...
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names of hats
liripipe, cowl, capuchon, liripipium, snood, bonnet, toque, turban, poke, toboggan-cap, crown, fedora and 72 more...
thebighenry 1.5 ⊗ bilby Apr 24, 2008