Lilis or Lilith, Adam’s wife before Eve was created. Lilis refused to submit to Adam, and was turned out of paradise; but she still haunts the air, and is especially hostile to new-born children.
⁂ Goethe has introduced her in his Faust (1790).
Lil´lia-Bianca, the bright, airy daughter of Nantolet, beloved by Pinac, the fellow-traveller of Mirabel, “the wild goose.”—Beaumont and Fletcher, The Wild-goose Chase (1652).
Lilliput, the country of the Lilliputians, a race of pygmies of very diminutive size, to whom Gulliver appeared a monstrous giant.—Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (“Voyage to Lilliput,” 1726).
⁂ The voyage to Lilliput[Lilliput] is a satire on the manners and habits of George I.
Lilly, the wife of Andrew. Andrew is the servant of Charles Brisac, a scholar.—Beaumont and Fletcher, The Elder Brother (1637).
Lilly (William), an English astrologer, who was employed during the Civil Wars by both parties; and even Charles I. consulted him about his projected escape from the Carisbrooke Castle (1602-1681).
He talks of Raymond Lully [q.v.] and the ghost of Lilly.—W. Congreve, Love for Love, iii. (1695).
Lillyvick, the collector of water-rates, and uncle to Mrs. Kenwigs. He considered himself far superior in a social point of view to Mr. Kenwigs, who was only an ivory turner; but he deigned to acknowledge the relation, and confessed him to be “an honest, well-behaved, respectable sort of a man.” Mr. Lillyvick looked on himself as one of the élite of society. “If ever an old gentleman made a point of appearing in public shaved close and clean, that old gentleman was Mr. Lillyvick. If ever a collector has borne himself like a collector, and assumed a solemn and portentous dignity, as if he had the whole world on his books, that collector was Mr. Lillyvick.” Mr. Kenwigs thought the collector, who was a bachelor, would leave each of the Kenwigses £100; but he “had the baseness” to marry Miss Petowker, of the Theatre Royal, and “swindle the Kenwigses of their golden expectations.”—C. Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (1838).
Lily (The), the French king for the time being. So called from the lilies, which, from the time of Clovis, formed the royal device of France. Tasso (Jerusalem Delivered) calls them gigli d’ore (“golden lilies”); but Lord Lytton calls them “silver lilies:”