kilt

Meaning

Verb

To gather up (skirts) around the body.

Noun

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.
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.

Synonyms

skirt

dress

👗

fustanella

gentle

kind

nice

tuck up

unmalicious

good

👍

gird up

Pronounced as (IPA)

/kɪlt/

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.