Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also lilly white) a chimney-sweep [a heavy joke at the expense of the soot-blackened sweep].

c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Lilly-white, c. a Chimney-sweeper.
1725		New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Lilly white, chimney sweeper.
1809		G. Andrewes Dict. Sl. and Cant.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1785].
1819		‘One of the Fancy’ Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress xviii: ‘the Lily-white,’ [...] The Flash term for a negro; and also for a chimney-sweeper.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1835		G. Kent Modern Flash Dict.
1840		Flash Mirror 16: Vy how red you looks at it, my lillivite — how nicely you got down the chimney.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum.
1862		E. de la Bédollière Londres et les Anglais 316/1: lily white, ramoneur de cheminées.
1890		C. Hindley Vocab. and Gloss. in True Hist. of Tom and Jerry.
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 45: Lily White, a chimney sweep.

2. (also lily) a black person [a heavy joke at the expense of the black-skinned individual].

1819		‘One of the Fancy’ Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress xviii: ‘the Lily-white,’ [...] The Flash term for a negro. [Ibid.] 45: He hop’d the Swell, Lord C–ST-R-GH, / Would show the Lily-Whites fair play.
1821		W.T. Moncrieff Tom and Jerry III iii: What, my lily! here, take a drop of mother’s milk. (gives black child gin out of a measure he has received from Landlord).
1833		Bell’s Life in London 5 May 4/1: Some people calls me ‘Gipsey’ because I’m brownish; and others knows me by the name of ‘Lillywhite’.
1835		G. Kent Modern Flash Dict.
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum.
1890		C. Hindley Vocab. and Gloss. in True Hist. of Tom and Jerry.
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 45: Lily White, [...] a negro.
1983		I.L. Allen Lang. of Ethnic Conflict 46: Color Allusions, Other than ‘Black’ and ‘Negro’: lily-white [a deliberate paradox].

3. a white hat.

1825

Pierce Egan’s Life in London 4 Dec. 357/2: Gas was the first to throw his caster into the ring, and Pope advanced with his lilly white from an opposite direction.

4. a young male homosexual, used adj. as insult in cite 2003.

1952		Lait & Mortimer USA Confidential 263: The lily-whites swish at 7th and Market.
1966		Trimble 5000 Adult Sex Words and Phrases.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular.
2003		(con. 1988) A. Swofford Jarhead 45: Drill Instructor Burke screamed in my ear the words faggot, addict, cumsucker, bitchmaster, dickskinner, dickfuck, fuckforbrains, nopecker, and lilywhitebitch.

5. (US black, also lilywhiter) a white person who claims superiority on the grounds of their colour.

1905		C. Chesnutt Colonel’s Dream 74: He’s not a ‘Black and Tan Republican,’ but a ‘Lily White’.
1949		Sun. World-Herald Mag. (Omaha, NE) 18 Sept. 26/1: In that year, their control of the Texas Republican party was broken by ‘lily-whiters,’ who supported Cecil Lyons of Sherman [DA].

6. (orig. US) in pl., a white person’s hands.

1935

A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks.

7. (US black, also lily) usu. in pl., bedsheets.

1938		Pittsburgh Courier (PA) 27 Aug. 11/1: The jitterbugs copping their outer-vines and skimmers and trucking to the slammer to hit the ozone [...] to climb between the lily-whites and beat out some doss.
1944		Cab Calloway New Hepsters Dict. in Calloway (1976) 257: lily whites (n.): bed sheets.
1944		D. Burley Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive 25: I bounced from my softy, gave the lilies a flip. [Ibid.] 41: Desdemona, the righteous wren, is stashed in her lilywhites.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 101: [I] drove straight for home, to stash my frame between a deuce of lilywhites.

8. (US black) a napkin.

1941

D. Burley N.Y. Amsterdam Star-News 22 Nov. 14: [I’d] lay my trill into her scarf-pad, hitch one of them most anxious lilywhites around my stretcher, cop a mellow squat and start forking.

9. morally impeccable by a given set of standards.

1945

E. Wilson I Am Gazing Into My 8-Ball 42: [T]wo or three readers wrote to the editor blasting me for being obscene, and demanding that I be yanked out of the otherwise lily-white paper .

10. (US) one who has no connections with any form of crime or corruption.

1952

H. McCoy Corruption City 132: ‘What’s the angle with this Conroy?’ [...] ‘This guy’s a lily-white.’.

11. (also clean skin) a drug trafficker who deliberately eschews ostentation to maximize their chances of avoiding arrest.

2000

Observer 9 July 16: They use public transport, not Ferraris, pay their rent and council tax on time, hold down a boring job and never get in trouble with the law. These are the ‘clean skins’ or ‘lilywhites’ — the new drug traffickers who dwarf the activities of the old English crime ‘families’.