billet [LME] A billet (from Anglo-Norman French billette, a little *bill) was once a short written document. In the mid 17th century, it came to be a ‘written order requiring a householder to lodge the bearer of the billet’; this was usually a soldier, hence the current meaning ‘temporary lodging for a soldier’. The early sense is preserved in the old-fashioned billet-doux, [L17th] French for ‘sweet letter’. See also billiards.