billy

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a metal cooking pot or pail used over a campfire; also a short club

   They boiled water for tea in a battered billy by the river.

In the cooking-pot sense, probably from Scottish dialect billy-pot or from billy ('companion, fellow'), a pet form of the name William; the club sense likewise derives from the personal name. Sometimes linked to Aboriginal billa ('water'), though this is doubtful.

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