Masculine

gilet

Meaning

Concepts

(masculine) waistcoat, vest
(masculine) sweater

Frequency

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ʒi.lɛ/

Cognate with Italian

Cognate with Arabic

Cognate with Greek

Cognate with Spanish

In summary

From regional Italian gileccu (Calabria), gilecco (Genoa), gelecco (Naples), ggileccu (Sicily), etc. (standard Italian gilè is borrowed from French), from Turkish yelek (“jelick; vest, waistcoat”) (ultimately from Proto-Turkic *yẹl (“wind”, noun)) with the final syllable modified to match other types of clothing such as corselet and mantelet. The Oxford English Dictionary does not regard the word as having derived from Arabic جَلِيقَة (jalīqa), which it views as a recent borrowing from Italian into Algerian Arabic. Compare Greek γιλέκο (giléko), Spanish chaleco.