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Kelly vs Billy - What's the difference?

kelly | billy |

As a noun kelly

is a square or hexagonal pipe that is turned in order to rotate the rotary table of a drilling rig.

As a proper noun billy is

a diminutive of the male given name william.

kelly

English

Alternative forms

* Kelley * (female given name) Kelli, Kellie

Proper noun

(en proper noun)
  • .
  • transferred from the surname.
  • , popular from the 1960s to the 1990s.

    • Quotations

    * 1867 Percy Hetherington Fitzgerald, The Life of David Garrick , Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1899, page 319 *: A better and more straightforward appeal, though less cool, was made to him by Hugh Kelly', - - - The play was so successful, and and Garrick said so much of it that Lord Pembroke was eager to be back from Paris to see it, though he said, with true aristocratic pride, that he could expect very little from such a name as "' Kelly ", especially if there be an "O'" before it. * 1986 , Enchantment , Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986, ISBN 0151287910, page 207 *: On the walls of the salon are blown-up photos of models with dazzling teeth and ingeniously tousled hair - women with names like Kelly and Dawn, who come from tiny towns in Texas and Washington, who are tall and thin, and who don't appear to be burdened by any pasts to speak of.

    billy

    English

    Noun

    (billies)
  • A billy club.
  • A billy goat.
  • * 1970 August, Valerius Geist, Mountain Goat Mysteries'', '' , page 62,
    • Then, during three days, I was amazed to see nannies with kids attack and chase off large billies .
  • * 1992 , Dwight R. Schuh, Mountain Goat (Oreamnos americanus)'', in ''Bowhunter's Encyclopedia , page 276,
    • In fact, distinguishing between billies and nannies isn't necessarily a sure thing.
  • * 2002 , Douglas H. Chadwick, A Beast the Color of Winter: The Mountain Goat Observed , 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.
  • # 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.
    • Let's get the billy and cook some beans.
  • * 1889 , Ernest Giles, Australia Twice Traversed , 2004, 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?
  • * 2011 , Rod Moss, The Hard Light of Day: An Artist's Story of Friendships in Arrernte Country , 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.
  • (slang) A condom (From the E-Rotic song "Willy, Use a Billy...Boy")
  • A slubbing or roving machine.
  • * 1840 , The Citizen , 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.”
  • * 1967 , Jennifer Tann, Gloucestershire Woollen Mills: Industrial Archaeology , 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 billy

    References

    * * Sceilig: Information Pack for Troops (p. 4) * The Patrol goes to Camp (pp. 9, 11).