billy
noun
a police officer's club or baton.
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billye.
billy
1 American
[bil-ee]
/ ˈbɪl i /
noun
billies
plural
-
Also called billy club. a police officer's club or baton.
-
a heavy wooden stick used as a weapon; cudgel.
-
Scot. Dialect. comrade.
-
Also called billycan. Australian. any container in which water may be carried and boiled over a campfire, ranging from a makeshift tin can to a special earthenware kettle; any pot or kettle in which tea is boiled over a campfire.
-
Textiles. (in Great Britain) a roving machine.
Billy
2
American
[bil-ee]
/ ˈbɪl i /
noun
billy
1
British
/ ˈbɪlɪˌkæn, ˈbɪlɪ /
noun
-
a metal can or pot for boiling water, etc, over a campfire
-
( as modifier )
billy-tea
-
informal to make tea
billy
2
British
/ ˈbɪlɪ /
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of billy
Perhaps all independently derived generic uses of Billy (male name); for Australian sense compare Scots dialect billy-pot cooking pot
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
We could see into that Holiday Inn through its plate glass windows and observe cops walking around its lobby with billy clubs, keeping a watchful eye on us.
From Salon ● Apr. 18, 2025
Alan Beck, an attorney for two military veterans who challenged the billy club ban, welcomed Benitez’s ruling.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 26, 2024
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Mr. Roman in 2008 first publicized “the presence of two members of the New Black Panther Party — one carrying a billy club — outside of a Philadelphia polling site.”
From Washington Times ● Aug. 15, 2023
Meanwhile, Sarabia scoops up a baby billy goat and cradles him in his arms.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 26, 2023
She was careful to keep the hole itself blocked so he wouldn’t notice it as she hooked his billy goats into their traces.
From Anya and the Dragon by Sofiya Pasternack
Billy Smith—his hair loose, wearing a dress, and barefoot after discarding his low-heel pumps—danced the woman invoked in the song.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 27, 2026
That changed last summer with a knighthood for Sir Billy Boston.
From BBC ● Jul. 19, 2026
Price also confessed, “We’re pulling from Bob Dylan, ‘Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid.’
From Salon ● Jul. 14, 2026
“We had some Ennio Morricone music. We put Bob Dylan’s ‘Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid’ in the movie originally — and that’s a score from somebody else’s movie.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 8, 2026
Billy Lee tended to Washington’s daily needs in the house, as he had for nearly twenty years.
From "In the Shadow of Liberty" by Kenneth C. Davis
Sweaty, swaying bodies surged across the square toward the Embassy, where tin-helmeted Egyptian police barred the way with billies.
From Time Magazine Archive
Little Rock came awake with a shock: a National Guard unit, 150 strong, with MIS, carbines and billies, churned up to the darkened high school in trucks, halftracks and jeeps.
From Time Magazine Archive
Blindfolded by their helmets, billies more or less at the ready, they go through their maneuvers like a ruptured accordion.
From Time Magazine Archive
A pair of young billies butted each other with their horns, but most of the time the animals were perfectly orderly.
From "The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm" by Nancy Farmer
And the Eastern billies are very willing to yield one half of the contention.
From The House with the Green Shutters by Brown, George Douglas
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
