biggin

• IPA^(key): /ˈbɪɡɪn/

From French béguin. Compare beguine.

biggin (plural biggins)

1. (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.

2. (historical) An official's hood or coif.

Said to have been from the inventor's surname.

• bigging

biggin (plural biggins)

1. 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.’

• gibing

biggin (plural biggins)

1. A building; a bigging.