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When applied to a person, the plural noun gills designates the flesh under the jaws and ears; also the cheeks.
—Cf. also the proverb every herring must hang by its own gill.
With reference to changes in a person’s complexion as an indicator of health or of state of mind, the phrase green about (also around, at, in, under) the gills means: looking or feeling ill or nauseated.
Earlier synonymous phrases are blue about the gills and white about the gills (cf. also, in quotation 5 below, the phrase all yellow and green about the gills). And the earlier antonymous phrase rosy about the gills means: glowing with health.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the phrase green about (also around, at, in, under) the gills that I have found:
1-: From a letter, dated Friday 13th October 1843, that the English novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870) wrote to the English novelist William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882)—as published in The Letters of Charles Dickens (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1880) [volume 1: 1833 to 1852; page 99]:
I am at this moment deaf in the ears, hoarse in the throat, red in the nose, green in the gills, damp in the eyes, twitchy in the joints, and fractious in the temper from a most intolerable and oppressive cold, caught the other day, I suspect, at Liverpool, where I got exceedingly wet.
2-: From The Satirist or, The Censor of the Times (London, England) of Sunday 25th February 1844 [page 63, column 1]—however, here, the phrase is applied to fishes and puns on the adjective green meaning: inexperienced:
Crockford says there are no such “miraculous draughts of fishes” as there used to be, in the palmy days of the play-world. “Everything,” he says, “is changed for the worse,” and it is much harder to hook even a “gudgeon,” now-a-days, because, as he sagely conjectures, they are not so green about the “gills” as formerly. Considering the number he has netted in his time, this, we should fancy, is a matter of small consequence.
3-: From Weekly Log-Book, published in The Poughkeepsie Eagle (Poughkeepsie, New York, USA) of Saturday 25th July 1857 [page 2, column 8]:
A Cowardly Robber.—A few nights since, when Mr. Porter, jeweller, of this city, was going home with a box under his arm, a fellow walked up to him and made a grab for it. Mr. Porter first levelled him with his fist, then showed him a little shooting iron, which so frightened the robber that he turned green under the gills. After much begging, the coward was permitted to slide.
4-: From The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers (New York: Blakeman & Mason, 1862), by the U.S. humorist Robert Henry Newell (1836-1901) [letter 34, page 237]:
“‘What’ll ye take for it, hoss?’
“I made out as though I didn’t keer, and says I:
“‘It was sent to me by a cousin up in York, and I don’t keer to sell; but yer may take it for $250.’
“He turned green about the gills at that, and says he:
“‘Say $100, and I’ll take it with my eyes shut.’
“‘It’s yourn,’ says I. ‘Give us the rags.’”
5-: From Fast in the Ice; Or Adventures in the Polar Regions (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1863), by the Scottish author Robert Michael Ballantyne (1825-1894) [chapter 1, page 10]:
“Please, sir, Sam Baker’s took very bad; […] he looks ’orrible bad, all yellow and green about the gills, and fearful red round the eyes.”
6-: From My Competitive Examination, published in London Society. An Illustrated Magazine of Light and Amusing Literature for the Hours of Relaxation (London, England) of July 1864 [page 86, column 2]:
I felt rather like a man going to be executed as Brown accompanied me down to the station. He was a cheery fellow […].
Seeing I looked rather down in the mouth, he said:
‘Hallo, White! you look rather green about the gills; you must not be so shaky; nervous men never pass; pluck up your spirits.’
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