2. (common).—a drink; a go (q.v.).
1785. Burns, Scots Drink. Haill breeks, a scone, and whisky gill.
3. in. pl. ‘g’ hard (colloquial).—The mouth or jaws; the face. See Potato-trap and Dial.
1622. Bacon, Historia Naturalis. Redness about the cheeks and gills.
1632. Jonson, Magnetic Lady, i. He … draws all the parish wills, Designs the legacies, and strokes the gills of the chief mourners.
b. 1738. Wolcot, Pindar’s Works (1809), i., 8. Whether you look all rosy round the gills, Or hatchet-fac’d like starving cats so lean.
1820. Lamb, Elia (Two Races of Men). What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower! what rosy gills!
1855. Thackeray, Newcomes, ch. viii. Binnie, as brisk and rosy about the gills as chanticleer, broke out in a morning salutation.
1884. Punch. He went a bit red in the gills.
4. in. pl. (common).—A very large shirt collar; also stick-ups and sideboards. Fr.: cache-bonbon-à-liqueur = a stick-up.