Meanings
plural Billy Barlows
- UKobsoleteA clown who performs in the streets.
[…] as Jerry White notes in his history of London in the nineteenth century: There were the clowns or “Billy Barlows”; jugglers, some on stilts, and slack-rope walkers; […]
2009, Dan Michael Worrall, The Anglo-German Concertina: A Social History, volume 1, page 491 more example
[…] for at an election meeting in East Maitland in 1845 William Lipscomb, the local wit, said of the squatters that 'so far from being wealthy, they had produced more Billy Barlows than any other class'.
1960, Bill Wannan, A Treasury of Australian Humour, page 40
Origin
Named after a real Billy Barlow, who (according to Hotten; see reference) was a well-known street character around the East End of London, and died in Whitechapel Workhouse.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
Billy Barlow. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Billy%20Barlow
“Billy Barlow.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Billy%20Barlow. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Billy Barlow,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Billy%20Barlow.
Source: Billy Barlow on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.