Piccadilly

From Pickadilly Hall, a house belonging to a tailor who specialized in a type of lace collar called a piccadill, possibly from conjectured Spanish *picadillo, from picado (“punctured, pierced”); compare 17th century Spanish picadura (“a similar lace collar”).

Piccadilly attested from 1743; previously the area was called Portugal, and the street Portugal Street (1692), after Catherine of Braganza.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /pɪkəˈdɪli/

Piccadilly

1. Piccadilly, a street running from Hyde Park Corner to Piccadilly Circus
   • 1881, W. S. Gilbert, Patience, act 1:

     Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostle in the high aesthetic band -
     If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your mediaeval hand.

   • 1912, Henry James Williams, It's a Long Way To Tipperary:

     Goodbye Piccadilly,
     Farewell Leicester Square -
     It's a long, long way to Tipperary
     But my heart's right there.

2. the surrounding area
3. (rail transport) The Piccadilly Line of the London Underground, originally known as the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway.