billycock

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See also: billy-cock

English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Apparently an alteration of earlier bully-cocked.

Noun[edit]

billycock (plural billycocks)

  1. (dated) A felt hat with a rounded crown, similar to a bowler.
    • 1911, GK Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown:
      a young man with a billycock hat on the back of his head tumbled up the steps in his eagerness.
    • 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room, paperback edition, Vintage Classics, page 68:
      All this blazed up and showed faces far back, round, pale, smooth, bearded, some with billycock hats [...].
    • 1936, Djuna Barnes, Nightwood, Faber & Faber, published 2007, page 56:
      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 [...].
    • 1978, Lawrence Durrell, Livia (Avignon Quintet), Faber & Faber, published 1992, page 372:
      the increasing paralysis confined her to this steel trolley, pushed by a gloved attendant dressed in a billycock hat and a long grey dustcoat.

References[edit]

  • John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary
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