shilf

Noun

shilf (uncountable)

1. (obsolete) straw or reeds.
   • Five-and-twenty of them are tied together and laid at the depth of one fathom at most on sunk posts, as the sevrugas go to shallow places and among the shilf.1800, William Tooke, View of the Russian Empire During the Reign of Catharine the Second, page 56
   • Two loads of clay, and one load of coarse shilf mixed and wetted, and trodden together to lump […]1849, The Ecclesiologist: Volume 9, page 288
2. (dialectal) Coarse shale or slate fragments.
   • Below the statum of tin ground is a bed of stiff clay called shilf or shale.1808, The Literary panorama - Volume 4, Issue 1808, page 547
   • So, too, will shilf, the name given to the little pieces of waste slate which are abundant in Cornwall: one part of shilf to two of mud and straw was the usual recipe for 'clob', as the Cornish often called it.1962, Connoisseur Year Book and Diary, page 104