shilf

English

Etymology

Compare German Shilf (“sedge”).

Noun

shilf (uncountable)

1. (obsolete) straw or reeds.
   • 1800, William Tooke, View of the Russian Empire During the Reign of Catharine the Second, page 56:

     Five-and-twenty of them are tied together and laid at the depth of one fathom at most on sunk posts, as the sevrugas go to shallow places and among the shilf.

   • 1849, The Ecclesiologist: Volume 9, page 288:

     Two loads of clay, and one load of coarse shilf mixed and wetted, and trodden together to lump […]

   • 2021, Heike Thieme, Mable: my naturally biggest Love to our dog !, page 64:

     Reet is that shilf we have on older houses here. They do take it off sometimes and change to new.

2. (dialect) Coarse shale or slate fragments.
   • 1808, The Literary panorama - Volume 4, Issue 1808, page 547:

     Below the statum of tin ground is a bed of stiff clay called shilf or shale.

   • 1962, Connoisseur Year Book and Diary, page 104:

     So, too, will shilf, the name given to the little pieces of waste slate which are abundant in Cornwall: one part of shilf to two of mud and straw was the usual recipe for 'clob', as the Cornish often called it.