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Silly vs Billy - What's the difference?

silly | billy |

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)
  • (label) Pitiable; deserving of compassion; helpless.
  • * 1590 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , I.vi:
  • 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
  • * (Edmund Spenser) (c.1552–1599)
  • After long storms with which my silly bark was tossed sore.
  • * (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) (1772-1834)
  • The silly buckets on the deck.
  • (label) Simple, unsophisticated, ordinary; rustic, ignorant.
  • * 1633 , (John Donne), "Sapho to Philænis":
  • For, if we justly call each silly man'' / A ''little island , What shall we call thee than?
  • * (William Shakespeare) (1564-1616)
  • A fourth man, in a silly habit.
  • * (John Milton) (1608-1674)
  • All that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.
  • 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= George Goodchild
  • , 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.
  • (Chaucer)
  • (label) Harmless; innocent; inoffensive.
  • * (Edmund Spenser) (c.1552–1599)
  • The silly virgin strove him to withstand.
  • * Robynson (More's Utopia)
  • A silly , innocent hare murdered of a dog.

    Derived terms

    * sillily (adverb) * silly season

    Antonyms

    * ("playful"): pious

    Synonyms

    * ("playful"): charming

    Noun

    (sillies)
  • (colloquial) A silly person; a fool.
  • (colloquial) A mistake.
  • Anagrams

    * * * 1000 English basic words

    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).