1785. Burns, Scots Drink. Haill breeks, a scone, and whisky gill.
3. in. pl. ‘g’ hard (colloquial).—The mouth or jaws; the face. See
Potato-trap and Dial.
1622. Bacon, Historia Naturalis. Redness about the cheeks and
gills.
1632. Jonson, Magnetic Lady, i. He ... draws all the parish wills,
Designs the legacies, and strokes the gills of the chief mourners.
b. 1738. Wolcot, Pindar’s Works (1809), i., 8. Whether you look all
rosy round the gills, Or hatchet-fac’d like starving cats so lean.
1820. Lamb, Elia (Two Races of Men). What a careless, even
deportment hath your borrower! what rosy gills!
1855. Thackeray, Newcomes, ch. viii. Binnie, as brisk and rosy
about the gills as chanticleer, broke out in a morning salutation.
1884. Punch. He went a bit red in the gills.
4. in. pl. (common).—A very large shirt collar; also stick-ups and
sideboards. Fr.: cache-bonbon-à-liqueur = a stick-up.
1859. Sala, Twice Round the Clock, 6 p., in Part 7. With a red
face, shaven to the superlative degree of shininess, with gills
white and tremendous, with a noble white waistcoat.
1884. Daily Telegraph, July 8, p. 5, c. 4. Lord Macaulay wore, to
the close of his life, ‘stick-ups,’ or gills.
To grease the gills.—verb. phr. (common).—To have a good meal; to wolf
(q.v.).
To look blue (or queer, or green) about the gills, verb. phr.
(common).—To be downcast or dejected; also to suffer from the effects
of a debauch. Hence, conversely, to be rosy about the gills = to be
cheerful.
1836. M. Scott, Tom Cringle’s Log, ch. ii. Most of them were very
white and blue in the gills when we sat down, and others of a dingy
sort of whitey-brown, while they ogled the viands in a most
suspicious manner.
1892. G. Manville Fenn, Witness to the Deed, ch. ii. You look
precious seedy. White about the gills.
A cant (or dig) in the gills, phr. (pugilists’).—A punch in the face.
See Bang.
Gill-flirt, subs. (old).—A wanton; a flirt. For synonyms, see Barrack
Hack and Tart.
1598. Florio, A Worlde of Wordes.
1611. Cotgrave, Dictionarie. Gaultiere, a whore, punke, drab,
queane, gill, flirt.
1690. B. E., Dict, of the Cant. Crew, s.v. A proud minx.
1785. Grose, Vulg. Tongue, s.v.
1811. Lexicon Balatronicum, s.v.
Gilly, subs. (American).—A fool. For synonyms, see Buffle and
Cabbage-head.
Gilly-gaupus, subs. phr. (Scots).—A tall loutish fellow.
1785. Grose, Vulg. Tongue, s.v.