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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

gillie.

A male attendant of a Scottish Highland chief.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈɡɪli/Received-Pronunciation/ˈɡɪli/General-American
  1. A male attendant of a Scottish Highland chief.

    Scotland
  2. A fishing and hunting guide; a man or boy who attends to a person who is fishing or hunting, especially in Scotland.

    Ireland · Scotland · UK
Where this word comes from

From Scottish Gaelic gille (“helper”), from Middle Irish gilla (“youth, young man; boy, male child; messenger, page, servant”), possibly borrowed from Old Norse gildr (“brawny, stout; of full worth”). Compare Irish giolla (“boy”).

verb/ˈɡɪli/Received-Pronunciation/ˈɡɪli/General-American
  1. To be a gillie, a fishing or hunting guide, for (someone).

    intransitive
Where this word comes from

From Scottish Gaelic gille (“helper”), from Middle Irish gilla (“youth, young man; boy, male child; messenger, page, servant”), possibly borrowed from Old Norse gildr (“brawny, stout; of full worth”). Compare Irish giolla (“boy”).

noun/ˈdʒɪli/Received-Pronunciation/ˈd͡ʒili/General-American
  1. A gill of an alcoholic drink.

    Scotland
Where this word comes from

From gill (“drink measure for spirits”) + -ie; probably a nonce word coined by Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759–1796) to maintain the rhyme in a poem entitled On a Scotch Bard Gone to the West Indies, first published in 1786: see the quotation.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.