The AI-powered English dictionary
plural biggins
(archaic) A child's cap; (figuratively) childhood. quotations
[…] my brain has been topsy-turvy, they say, ever since the biggin was bound first round my head; so turning me upside down may peradventure restore it again.
1819, Walter Scott, Ivanhoe
An old woman's biggin for a nightcap.
1629, Philip Massinger, Nathan Field, The Picture
(historical) An official's hood or coif.
A coffee pot with a strainer or perforated metallic vessel for holding the ground coffee, through which boiling water is poured. quotations examples
As he became more popular, household objects were brought into requisition for his instruction in a copious vocabulary; and whenever he appeared in the Yard ladies would fly out at their doors crying ‘Mr Baptist—tea-pot!’ ‘Mr Baptist—dust-pan!’ ‘Mr Baptist—flour-dredger!’ ‘Mr Baptist—coffee-biggin!’ At the same time exhibiting those articles, and penetrating him with a sense of the appalling difficulties of the Anglo-Saxon tongue.
1855 December – 1857 June, Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1857
‘That silver biggin holds coffee, and there are cups on the lower tier of the cart.’
1981, Gene Wolfe, chapter XVI, in The Claw of the Conciliator (The Book of the New Sun; 2), New York: Timescape, page 138