Word.ws English Dictionary

brown bill

brown bill is the alternative form 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

Forms of brown bill

pluralbrown bills

Questions about brown bill

What is brown bill the alternative form of?
Brown bill is the alternative form of brown-bill.

Words near brown bill in the dictionary

  1. Brown Besses
  2. Brown Betties
  3. Brown Betty
  4. Brown Betty teapot
  5. Brown Betty teapots
  6. brown bill
  7. brown bills
  8. brown bits
  9. brown bomber
  10. brown bombers
  11. brown boobook

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: brown bill (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “brown bill.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/brown_bill. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.