| 释义 |
billy
noun- a metal pail with a handle used for boiling water, making tea, cooking, etc, over a fire when camping or in the bush AUSTRALIA, 1849
A quintessential item of the Australian bush. Scottish English had (c.1828 Scottish National Dictionary) “billy-pot” as “a cooking utensil” and this is probably the origin. Not, as variously conjectured, from French bouilli “boiled”, nor Wiradjuri (an eastern Australian Aboriginal language) billa “water”, nor the proper name Billy. - Would you mind lending us your billy to get a drink of water? — Norman Lindsay, Comic Art of Norman Lindsay, p. 165, 1911
- Sheep and horses were soon feeding quietly and the billy hanging over the fire. — Charles Melaun, The Squatter’s Daughter, p. 2, 1933
- For he’s gone away and left us / Here, marooned on foreign soil, / Where ’round our spitting primuses / We watch our billies boil. — Tip Kelaher, The Digger Hat and other verses, p. 50, 1942
- Florrie said at last, “Time we got some water for washing up,” and picked up the billy. — Norman Lindsay, The Cousin from Fiji, p. 117, 1945
- By the fire the billies were boiling, the tucker of both camps spread out on tarpaulins. — Ion L. Idriess, Over the Range, p. 10, 1947
- Outside I could hear the milkman dipping milk into grandmother’s billy[.] — D.E. Charlwood, All the Green Year, p. 112, 1965
- The billy–a battered and blackened old container with a wire handle on it, or on big jobs a four-gallon kero-tin in similar condition–is filled with water and boiled by the Peggy. — John O’Grady, Aussie Etiket, p. 5, 1971
- The billy’s boiling–you could at least make the tea. — Jenny Pausacker, What are ya?, p. 102, 1987
- a police officer’s blackjack or club, a truncheon US, 1850
- I clung desperately to the back of the seat until one of the cops hit me on the arm with a billy. — Hunter S. Thompson, Songs of the Doomed, p. 86, 1962
- The cop came down. He had his billy out. — Nat Hentoff, Jazz Country, p. 129, 1965
- Back at school I eat in a restaurant full of police. As audibly as possible I compose a poem entitled “Ode to the TPF.” It extolls the beauty of rich wood billies, the sheen of handcuffs, the feel of a boot on your face. — James Simon Kunen, The Strawberry Statement, p. 45, 1968
- a warning signal IRELAND
- The billy (warning) would go from street to street and road to road–“Look out, Missus, here’s the Glimmer Man” — Eamonn MacThomas, Gur Cake and Coal Blocks, p. 120, 1976
- a bong (a water-pipe) for smoking marijuana AUSTRALIA
A play on “billabong” (a water hole). - — Lenie Johansen, The Dinkum Dictionary, 1988
- — James Lambert, The Macquarie Book of Slang, 1996
▷ see:BILLYWHIZZ
▶ boil the billy
to stop for a break and make tea in a billy AUSTRALIA, 1867
Occasionally used to mean to make tea not in a billy but an electric kettle or the like.- — Ion L. Idriess, Over the Range, p. 72, 1947
- “Joe will be boiling the billy somewhere this side of Lacey’s Crossing,” Blaze prophesised. — Kylie Tennant, The Honey Flow, p. 51, 1956
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