Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A soft felt hat with a deeply creased crown.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A foot: from the beautiful left foot of the heroine of Du Maurier's story ‘Trilby,’ of which it was said that there was only one in Paris to match it and that was Trilby's other foot.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A narrow-brimmed felt hat.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a hat made of felt with a creased crown
  • noun singer in a novel by George du Maurier who was under the control of the hypnotist Svengali

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[After the novel Trilby, by George du Maurier (because such a hat was worn in the original London stage production based on the novel).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the stage adaptation of George du Maurier's novel Trilby, in which such hats were worn.

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Examples

  • Racegoers in trilby's, murderers with torsos in cabin trunks.

    Brighton Clock Peter Ashley 2007

  • Racegoers in trilby's, murderers with torsos in cabin trunks.

    Archive 2007-10-01 Peter Ashley 2007

  • "Most popular is our short-brimmed trilby, which is a young fashion take on a regular trilby."

    The Latest Hat Craze 2009

  • Note how Indy's has a wider brim, unlike the one on the left The one on the left is more like a trilby, which is essentially a fedora with a narrower brim.

    Original Signal - Transmitting Digg 2010

  • On my first visit to Manila alter the American occupation I was struck to see Chinese in the streets wearing the pigtail down their backs, and dressed in nicely-cut semi-European patrol-jacket costumes of cloth or washing-stuffs, with straw or felt "trilby" hats.

    The Philippine Islands John Foreman

  • Men: Ms. Farr urges: "No big cargo shorts and logo tees or straw pork pies or trilby hats," a shorter-brimmed fedora.

    Ace the School Reunion Ray A. Smith 2011

  • Glummer still was the plight of tiny homosexual Ben Mitchell, whose response to being caught kissing hooded squeeze Duncan was to festoon the Square with swirling wreaths of misspelled accusations "BIGGOT" and make Patrick's trilby spin with threats of the "watch it, mister!" genus.

    World Of Lather 2011

  • Joe worked on the railways as a goods guard, was incurably cheerful, always wore a trilby, taught himself French and Esperanto, and was a communist.

    Stalin Ate My Homework by Alexei Sayle - review Ian Sansom 2010

  • To consummate the baptism of his great protagonist in the trilby hat, Raymond Chandler decided on the fancy of combining the Christian name of the highest-scoring schoolboy batsman of the winning house in the previous summer's Dulwich cricket – and so it came to pass that the batsman was "Philip" and the house was "Marlowe", and thus was leafy south London in a blink translated into the mean streets of America.

    From Jeeves to Herriot: all creatures great and sporty | Frank Keating 2011

  • How fitting, then, that as I walked under the railway bridge, a man with a narrow beard wearing a trilby hat walked past me in the opposite direction.

    Running London: Leg 17 - Knightsbridge to Herne Hill 2011

Comments

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  • 1.5 ⊗ bilby

    April 24, 2008