gillie

name

1. A surname.

noun

Etymology: 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.

1. A gill of an alcoholic drink.

   “Fareweel, my rhyme-compoſing billie! / Your native ſoil was right ill-willie; / But may ye flouriſh like a lily, / Now bonilie! / I'll toaſt ye in my hindmoſt gillie, / Tho' owre the Sea!”

verb

Etymology: 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”).

1. To be a gillie, a fishing or hunting guide, for (someone).

   “I had taken bigger fish on the Alta, while fishing as Tony Pulitzer's guest on the Jöraholmen farm, but never under circumstances as bizarre as the day I found myself being ghillied by a girl.”

   “[I]t was distance casting that changed my life. I started by gillying for [William] Taylor, retrieving his line between long casts and laying it out in tangle-free coils on the platform at his side.”