billycock

See also: billy-cock

English

Alternative forms

• billy-cock

Etymology

Apparently an alteration of earlier bully-cocked.

Noun

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

• John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary