Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A felt hat with a low, rounded crown, similar to a derby.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A stiff, round, low-crowned felt hat: often called a billycock hat. Also spelled
billicock .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- A round, low-crowned felt hat; a wideawake.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun dated A felt hat with a rounded crown, similar to a
bowler .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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A billycock is a beautiful object (it may be eagerly urged), but it is not in the same style of architecture as Ely Cathedral; it is a dome, a small rococo dome in the Renaissance manner, and does not go with the pointed arches that assault heaven like spears.
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The shopwoman produced a head-dress, which Tottie afterwards described as a billycock 'at with a feather in it.
Post Haste 1859
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Some ribald passer-by put a battered felt hat upon Vishnu's sacred curls, and there the poor image sat, an alien in an indifferent land, a sack across its shoulders, a "billycock" upon its head, and honoured at most with a passing stare.
Gulliver of Mars 1905
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Some ribald passer-by put a battered felt hat upon Vishnu's sacred curls, and there the poor image sat, an alien in an indifferent land, a sack across its shoulders, a "billycock" upon its head, and honoured at most with a passing stare.
Gulliver of Mars Edwin Lester Linden Arnold 1896
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The women affect parti-coloured petticoats of home-made baize or woollen stuff, dyed blue, scarlet, brown, or orange; a scalloped cape of the same material bound with some contrasting hue; and a white or coloured head-kerchief, sometimes topped by the _carapuça_, but rarely by the vulgar 'billycock' of the Canaries.
To the Gold Coast for Gold A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Volume I Richard Francis Burton 1855
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I beg that you will look upon it not as a battered billycock but as an intellectual problem.
Sole Music 2010
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I had a week at most at my disposal, so for three or four nights I set off stealthily after dark, dressed in an ancient pea jacket and patched unmentionables, with a muffler and billycock hat and cracked boots, Galand in one pocket and flask in t'other, skulking round Conduit Street to see what his movements were.
Watershed 2010
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I said I had a ship, and a greasy disease in a billycock hat and brass watch-chain asked:
THE NUMBERS 2010
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Despising this latter sort of thing is not despising Mr. Wells, but only some cheap atheist in a billycock hat whom he had the bad luck to meet when he was a boy.
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Then on the heels of this procession came a dogcart driven by a man in a billycock hat and containing a lady in dark green.
The Wheels of Chance: a bicycling idyll Herbert George 2006
brtom commented on the word billycock
"... fawn dustcoat on his arm, tawny red brogues, fieldglasses in bandolier and a grey billycock hat."
Jayce, Ulysses, 15
January 29, 2007
qroqqa commented on the word billycock
. . . the grandmother who, for some unknown reason, was dressed as a man, wearing a billycock and a corked moustache, ridiculous and plump in tight trousers and a red waistcoat . . .
—Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
November 19, 2008
ruzuzu commented on the word billycock
There should be a list of hats that remind us of bilby. I'd add this and trilby.
October 28, 2015