subs. (cricketers’).—A bat.

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  1892.  Cassell’s Saturday Journal, 21 Sept., 13. 2. For nearly ten years I earned a living—and a good one—by ‘wielding the WILLOW’ and hunting the leather.

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  2.  (old).—Mourning. Hence TO WEAR THE WILLOW = to lament the dead.

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  1595.  SHAKESPEARE, 3 Henry VI., iii. 3. 228.

        Tell him, in hope he’ll prove a widower shortly,
I’ll WEAR THE WILLOW garland for his sake.

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  c. 1615.  FLETCHER, The Night-Walker, or the Little Thief, i.

        We see your WILLOW, and are sorry for’t;
And, though it be a wedding, we are half mourners.

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