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dilly bag
1. a small bag for odds and ends.
2. toilet or make-up bag: Don't forget to put toothpaste in your dilly bag.
Contributor's comments: [Melbourne informant] Dilly bag is not used for toiletries. Your dilly bag is where you put your bits and pieces. My understanding is that this word is from aboriginal usage.
Contributor's comments: [Melbourne informant] In Scouting a Dilly Bag is the bag you keep your cutlery and plates in. In most cases it was your old Library bag from school. A cotton bag with a drawstring at the top.
Contributor's comments: [Melbourne informant] A dilly bag is more like a small hold-all, less formal than a handbag and not as big as a shopping bag. It's where you put your bits and bobs.
Editor's comments: The word "dilly" originally referred to a bag or basket made from woven grass or similar fibre and comes from the Aboriginal language Yagara (from the Brisbane region).
Contributor's comments: [Riverina informant] My mother used this term for any small carry bag eg., her shopping bag. I have not heard the term in recent times however even though we still use the term within the family.
Contributor's comments: A dilly bag is not a toileteries bag, it's a little bag for you to put your bits and bobs in.
Contributor's comments: We used the term dilly bag in our family in Adelaide whenever we packed toiletries for a holiday.
Contributor's comments: My mother (born in Southern Queensland but spent most of her life in Sydney) often used refer to dilly bags as any bag for say, carrying sports clothes, tools etc.
Contributor's comments: My family always use the term for any sort of carry bag, and I can remember visiting the Brisbane many years ago and looking at the aboriginal display and it was spelled dili and according to the sign it was a carry basket made from woven grasses and used by the women food gatherers.
Contributor's comments: Used here in the Top End by mostly Aboriginal people. The hand made (of string often made from Banyan fig tree roots) bags are marketed in the NT as dilly bags.