biggin

English

From French béguin. Compare beguine.

biggin (plural biggins)

(archaic) A child's cap; (figuratively) childhood.
- 1819, Walter Scott, Ivanhoe:
  […] 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.
- 1629, Philip Massinger, Nathan Field, The Picture:
  An old woman's biggin for a nightcap.
(historical) An official's hood or coif.

Said to have been from the inventor's surname.

biggin (plural biggins)

A coffee pot with a strainer or perforated metallic vessel for holding the ground coffee, through which boiling water is poured. [from 18th c.]
- 1855 December – 1857 June, Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1857, →OCLC:
  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.
- 1981, Gene Wolfe, chapter XVI, in The Claw of the Conciliator (The Book of the New Sun; 2), New York: Timescape, →ISBN, page 138:
  ‘That silver biggin holds coffee, and there are cups on the lower tier of the cart.’

Unknown

biggin (plural biggins)

A drinking vessel for ale or beer; possibly a tankard.
- 1847, Frederick Marryat, chapter 14, in The Children of the New Forest, England: H. Hurst:
  Oswald's wife then put before him a large pie, and some wheaten bread, with a biggin of good beer.

biggin (plural biggins)