Skip to content

kilt

noun

  1. knee-length garment of Celtic and Scottish origin
L17005 on Wikidata ↗

Wiktionary

Pronunciation: /kɪlt/

noun

Etymology: From Middle English kilten (“to tuck up, gird”), apparently from North Germanic, ultimately from Old Norse kelta, kjalta (“skirt; lap”). Perhaps from Proto-Germanic *kelt-, *kelþǭ, *kilþį̄ (“womb”), from Proto-Indo-European *gelt- (“round body; child”). Cognate with Danish kilte (“to tuck”), Swedish kilta (“to swathe”). Related to English child.

  1. A traditional Scottish garment, usually worn by men, having roughly the same morphology as a wrap-around skirt, with overlapping front aprons and pleated around the sides and back, and usually made of twill-woven worsted wool with a tartan pattern.
  2. Any Scottish garment from which the above lies in a direct line of descent, such as the philibeg, or the great kilt or belted plaid
  3. A plaid, pleated school uniform skirt sometimes structured as a wraparound, sometimes pleated throughout the entire circumference; also worn by boys in the 19th-century United States.

    I was about to say that I had known the Celebrity from the time he wore kilts. But I see I will have to amend that, because he was not a celebrity then, nor, indeed, did he achieve fame until some time after I left New York for the West.

  4. A variety of non-bifurcated garments made for men and loosely resembling a Scottish kilt, but most often made from different fabrics and not always with tartan plaid designs.

verb

Etymology: From Middle English kilt, equivalent to kill + -t.

  1. Nonstandard form of killed: simple past and past participle of kill.

    that unspotted Lamb, That for the Sins of all the World was kilt

    But tweren’t so awful long before Marse Hampton got kilt in de big battle, and Marse Thad, too. Dey was both kilt in de charge, right dere on de breastworks, with de guns in dey hands, dem two young masters of mine, right dere in dat Gettysburg battle […] And I was eighteen in dat October after dat big fight what Marse Thad and Marse Hampton got kilt in.