▪ I. bigg, big Sc. and dial.
(bɪg)
Also 5 byge, 6 bygg(e, 6–7 bigge.
[a. ON. bygg barley (Da. byg, Sw. bjug), corresp. to OE. béow grain:—OTeut. *beuwo-m, f. Old Aryan root *bheu to grow, to be (whence be; cf. Gr. ϕύω, Skr. bhū).]
1. The four-rowed barley, an inferior but hardier variety of the six-rowed or winter barley (Hordeum hexastichon), of rapid growth, and suited to inferior soils and more northern latitudes. (Barley is generic; bear includes the six-rowed and four-rowed kinds; bigg the four-rowed only. But bear interchanges in local use, now with barley, now with bigg.)
c 1450 in Wr.-Wülcker Voc. 726 Hoc exaticum, hec mixtilio, byge. 1547 Wills & Invent. N.C. (1835) 127 I gyue to George Bayts a chaldre of Bygg & a chalder of hauer. 1562 Turner Herbal ii. (1568) 16 The seconde kinde is called in Latin Hordeum Tetrastichum, in Englishe, bigge barley or beare or bigge alone. This kind groweth muche in y⊇ North country. 1570 Levins Manip. 118 Bigge, corne, hordeum quadratum. 1633 Acts Durham High Commiss. Crt. 57 And did violently carrie awaie the tieth beare or bigge. 1845 Statist. Acc. Scotl. XII. 453 Oats & bear or big with a little barley, are the kinds of grain. 1882 Proc. Berw. Nat. Club IX. 444 Used for husking big, or four-rowed barley. |
2. attrib., as in bigg-barley, bigg-market, bigg-riddle.
1597 Gerard Herbal. i. xliv. §2. 64 Called..of our English northerne people..Big Barly. 1864 Sat. Rev. 29 May, Most strangers would be inclined to think that the ‘Bigg Market’ meant the large one. 1446 Wills & Inv. N.C. (1835) I. 95 Item j whetridell, j bigridell. |
▪ II. bigg(e
obs. form of big.