sb. Forms: α. 4 (in Comb.), 6 fely, (6 felee, felly), 5–8 fillie, (6 file, fille, fyllye, 8 filley), 6– filly. β. 7 philly. [? a. ON. fylja wk. fem.:—*fulfén-, f. ful-, fol-: see FOAL.]
1. A young mare, a female foal.
a. 1400[?]. Chester Pl. (Shaks. Soc.), I. 51.
| Take heare cattes, dogges too, | |
| Atter and foxe, fillie, mare alsoe. |
1525. Test. Ebor. (Surtees), V. 206. To Thomas Milner, hir sone, a file with a whit foite.
a. 1641. Suckling, Answ. to Let., Wks. (1696), 99/2. An unback’d Filly may by chance give thee a fall.
1709. Lond. Gaz., No. 4591/4. Stoln or stray’d … a black Fillie, two years old.
1848. Kingsley, Saint’s Trag., III. iii. 93. What’s good for the filly, is good for the mare, say I.
b. To slip her filly: transf. of a woman, to miscarry.
1665. Pepys, Diary, 31 March. My Lady Castlemaine is sick again—people think, slipping her filly.
2. transf. Applied to a young lively girl.
1616. Beaum. & Fl., Scornful Lady, III. i. A skittish filly will be your fortune, Welford.
1668. Sedley, Mulb. Gard., I. i.
| I believe no body will be very fond of a | |
| Hide-Park Filly for a Wife. |
1711. Addison, Spect., No. 211, 1 Nov., ¶ 9. I am joined in Wedlock for my Sins to one of those Fillies who are described in the old Poet with that hard Name you gave us the other Day.
1849. Miss Mulock, Ogilvies, l. (1875), 390. Katharine’s a young filly that will neither be led nor driven.
1881. Besant & Rice, Chapl. Fleet, I. 41. You are but a filly yet—ay—a six-months’ puppy, so to say.
3. attrib. and Comb., as filly-foal; † filly-stag, a filly foal.
1523. Fitzherbert, The Boke of Husbandry, § 68. It is a horse-foole, bycause a horse gate it, though it be a *felly-fole.
1884. W. Sussex Gaz., 25 Sept., Advt. Brown draught brood mare, with filly foal.
1378. Will of J. Delmarshe, in Test. Karl. (1893), 125. Item, Johanni, filio Thomæ Sympson, unum *felystag.
Hence † Filly v., to give birth to a filly. Fillying, vbl. sb.
1598. Florio, Partorire … to calue … to fillie. Parto … a caluing,… a fill[y]ing, etc.
