The AI-powered English dictionary
plural tillies
(Ireland) An extra product given to a customer at no additional charge; a lagniappe. quotations examples
Myles: "Indeed your Honour may safely say so : Iwas ploughing away […] when I bethought how I forgot to tell little Jem, when he'd be buying my pen'orth of snuff, to be sure to get it in two separate ha'porths, the way he'd have the two tillies. So what could Ido but run home, to […] go myself for the snuff, and be sure to get my tillies.
1855, Legends of mount Leinster, by Harry Whitney
He watched her pour into the measure and thence into the jug rich white milk, not hers. […] She poured again a measureful and a tilly.
1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 1]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […]
A bakereen's dusind with tithe tillies to boot.
1939 May 4, James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, London: Faber and Faber Limited; republished London: Faber & Faber Limited, 1960,
At each door he poured from the can into a pint measure and into the house-wife's jug, always with a tilly for the cat, whether there was a cat or not, sometimes splashing the step with milk to the annoyance of the housewife.
2007, Patrick Semple, The Rector who Wouldn't Pray for Rain
(UK) A small open-backed truck. quotations examples
After a fortnight's careful nursing my leg healed and I was packed off in a tilly (utility truck) with my kit-bag to join my comrades at Fairmilehead.
1978, Ada F Kay (A. J. Stewart), Died 1513-born 1929 / King's Memory, page 83
One night soon after our arrival in Belgium, four of us set off to a dance in a rest centre, behind the lines, for the forces. We drove across a snowy waste in a tilly truck, singing "Lilly Marlene".
1980, Once Upon a Ward: V.A.D.s' Own Stories and Pictures, page 119
comparative more tilly, superlative most tilly
Containing till (unsorted glacial sediment). examples