Definition of "billy"

Then, during three days, I was amazed to see nannies with kids attack and chase off large billies.

1970 August, Valerius Geist, Mountain Goat Mysteries, Field & Stream, page 62

In fact, distinguishing between billies and nannies isn't necessarily a sure thing.

1992, Dwight R. Schuh, “Mountain Goat (Oreamnos americanus)”, in Bowhunter's Encyclopedia, page 276

It isn't just billies that enter the bleak season with rut-depleted fat reserves, but rams, bull elk, buck deer, and others.

2002, Douglas H. Chadwick, A Beast the Color of Winter: The Mountain Goat Observed‎, page 159

Fareweel, my rhyme-compoſing billie! / Your native ſoil was right ill-willie; / But may ye flouriſh like a lily, / Now bonilie! / I'll toaſt ye in my hindmoſt gillie, / Tho' owre the Sea!

1786 July 31, Robert Burns, “On a Scotch Bard Gone to the West Indies”, in Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, Kilmarnock, East Ayrshire: Printed by John Wilson; reprinted Kilmarnock: James McKie, March 1867, page 184

[…] 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.”

1840, The Citizen, page 347

On the second floor there were 2 billies, 1 carding and 1 scribbling machine.

1967, Jennifer Tann, Gloucestershire Woollen Mills: Industrial Archaeology‎, page 126

All fighting coves you too must know, / Ben Caunt as well as Bendigo, / And to each mill be sure to go, / […] And you must sport a blue billy, / Or a yellow wipe […]

1859, Ducange Anglicus, The Vulgar Tongue, page 54

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?

1889, Ernest Giles, Australia Twice Traversed, published 2004, page 239

Oh there once was a swagman camped in the billabong, Under the shade of a coolibah tree, And he sang as he looked at the old billy boiling, 'Who'll come a'waltzing Matilda, with me.'

1895, “Waltzing Matilda”, Banjo Paterson (lyrics)‎

Mother prepared a splendid picnic. […] Rugs, food and the black billy for making tea, were packed into the old baby buggy and we trundled it straight down Simcoe Street.

1942, Emily Carr, “Loyalty”, in The Book of Small

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.

2011, Rod Moss, The Hard Light of Day: An Artist's Story of Friendships in Arrernte Country, unnumbered page