Silly vs Billy - What's the difference?
silly | billy |
(label) Pitiable; deserving of compassion; helpless.
* 1590 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , I.vi:
* (Edmund Spenser) (c.1552–1599)
* (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) (1772-1834)
(label) Simple, unsophisticated, ordinary; rustic, ignorant.
* 1633 , (John Donne), "Sapho to Philænis":
* (William Shakespeare) (1564-1616)
* (John Milton) (1608-1674)
Foolish, showing a lack of good sense and wisdom; frivolous, trifling.
Irresponsible, showing irresponsible behaviors.
Semiconscious, witless.
(label) Of a fielding position, very close to the batsman; closer than short.
Simple, not intelligent, unrefined.
* {{quote-book, year=1935, author=
, title=Death on the Centre Court, chapter=1
, passage=“Anthea hasn't a notion in her head but to vamp a lot of silly mugwumps. She's set her heart on that tennis bloke
(label) Happy; fortunate; blessed.
(label) Harmless; innocent; inoffensive.
* (Edmund Spenser) (c.1552–1599)
* Robynson (More's Utopia)
(colloquial) A silly person; a fool.
(colloquial) A mistake.
A billy club.
A billy goat.
* 1970 August, Valerius Geist, Mountain Goat Mysteries'', '' ,
* 1992 , Dwight R. Schuh, Mountain Goat (Oreamnos americanus)'', in ''Bowhunter's Encyclopedia ,
* 2002 , Douglas H. Chadwick, A Beast the Color of Winter: The Mountain Goat Observed ,
# A male goat; a ram.
(Geordie) A good friend.
(Australia, New Zealand) A tin used by bushmen to boil tea, a billypot.
* (seeCites)
(UK, Australia) A billycan.
* 1889 , Ernest Giles, Australia Twice Traversed , 2004,
* 2011 , Rod Moss, The Hard Light of Day: An Artist's Story of Friendships in Arrernte Country ,
(slang) A condom (From the E-Rotic song "Willy, Use a Billy...Boy")
A slubbing or roving machine.
* 1840 , The Citizen ,
* 1967 , Jennifer Tann, Gloucestershire Woollen Mills: Industrial Archaeology ,
As nouns the difference between silly and billy
is that silly is a silly person; a fool while billy is a billy club.As an adjective silly
is pitiable; deserving of compassion; helpless.As a proper noun Billy is
a diminutive of the male given name William.silly
English
Adjective
(er)- A silly man, in simple weedes forworne, / And soild with dust of the long dried way; / His sandales were with toilesome trauell torne, / And face all tand with scorching sunny ray
- After long storms with which my silly bark was tossed sore.
- The silly buckets on the deck.
- For, if we justly call each silly man'' / A ''little island , What shall we call thee than?
- A fourth man, in a silly habit.
- All that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.
George Goodchild
- (Chaucer)
- The silly virgin strove him to withstand.
- A silly , innocent hare murdered of a dog.
Derived terms
* sillily (adverb) * silly seasonAntonyms
* ("playful"): piousSynonyms
* ("playful"): charmingNoun
(sillies)Anagrams
* * * 1000 English basic wordsbilly
English
Noun
(billies)page 62,
- Then, during three days, I was amazed to see nannies with kids attack and chase off large billies .
page 276,
- In fact, distinguishing between billies and nannies isn't necessarily a sure thing.
page 159,
- It isn't just billies that enter the bleak season with rut-depleted fat reserves, but rams, bull elk, buck deer, and others.
- Let's get the billy and cook some beans.
page 239,
- We had been absent from civilisation, so long, that our tin billies', the only boiling utensils we had, got completely worn or burnt out at the bottoms, and as the boilings for glue and oil must still go on, what were we to do with ' billies with no bottoms?
unnumbered page,
- Over the fence, in a shallow gully 100 metres away, this guy and his wife were living on the dirt in the open weather with just a blanket, billies , a dog and a transistor radio. They didn't even have water.
page 347,
- at the time there existed in Dublin and its immediate neighbourhood, “forty-five manufacturers, having twenty-two billies , giving employment to 2885 work people, on whom depended for support 7386 individuals, manufacturing 29,312 pieces of cloth, of various qualities, valued at £336,380.”
page 126,
- On the second floor there were 2 billies , 1 carding and 1 scribbling machine.
Derived terms
* billycan, billy-can * billy cart * Silly Billy, silly billyReferences
* *Sceilig: Information Pack for Troops(p. 4) *
The Patrol goes to Camp(pp. 9, 11).