Talk:flirt

Etymology
I read that flirt was borrowed from old french "conter fleurette".

And it's what the french wiktionary page of flirt explains...

-- I've found English and American dictionaries corroborating this supposal, others giving a Germanic etymology like your wiktionary with this good argument of similar words in other Germanic languages (spelling & original meaning), but some French don't want to hear about it... If both wiktionaries could give both hypotheses, it would be great.

RFV discussion: December 2021–January 2022
Rfv-sense: adjective. Absent from Johnson, Century, OED or EDD, it suddenly appears without a source in Webster. My working theory is that Webster looked at the Shakespeare quote under Johnson's noun sense "A pert young hussey" (Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 4: "scuruie knaue, I am none of his flurt-gils, I am none of his skaines mates", recorded in Johnson without a hyphen: "I am none of his flirt gills") and decided to "improve" upon it by recording this sense as an adjective. This, that and the other (talk) 03:47, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Well, I seem to have cited this, but they are all modern uses, so definitely not obsolete. Kiwima (talk) 08:06, 26 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I didn't even think to look for contemporary uses... I suppose the definition here is just "flirty". This, that and the other (talk) 08:48, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I would have said, but yeah. Kiwima (talk) 19:46, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

RFV-failed Kiwima (talk) 22:46, 29 January 2022 (UTC)