Word.ws English Dictionary

brown-bills

brown-bills is the plural of brown-bill.

Meaning of brown-bill

Noun

brown-bill (plural brown-bills)

  1. (historical) A type of halberd used by medieval foot-soldiers and constables, painted brown to prevent rust.
    • Let the Kanne of ſtrong ale [be] your conſtable, vvith the toaſte his brovvne bill, and ſugar and nutmegs his vvatchmen ſtand in a readineſſe, to entertaine mee euerie time I come by your lodging.1599, [Thomas] Nashe, “[The Epistle Dedicatorie]”, in Nashes Lenten Stuffe, […], London: […] [Thomas Judson and Valentine Simmes] for N[icholas] L[ing] and C[uthbert] B[urby] […], →OCLC

Questions about brown-bills

What is brown-bills the plural of?
Brown-bills is the plural of brown-bill.

Words near brown-bills in the dictionary

  1. brown-bagging
  2. brown-bags
  3. brown-bill
  4. brown-billed scythebill
  5. brown-billed scythebills
  6. brown-bills
  7. brown-brown
  8. brown-eyed
  9. brown-eyed soul
  10. brown-eyed Susan
  11. brown-eyed Susans

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: brown-bills (page history and authors); brown-bill (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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