''flirt'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260919121947-00-⌔

flirt - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

flirt (plural flirts)

• A sudden jerk; a quick throw or cast; a darting motion
  • ✤ several little flirts and vibrations¹
  • ✤ with many a flirt and flutter²
  • ✤ an angry hectic in each cheek, a fierce flirt of her fan, and two or three short sniffs that betokened mischief³
• Someone who flirts a lot or enjoys flirting; a flirtatious person.
  • ✤ ‘Oooh, don’t.‘Lilly staggered behind the counter.‘Hangover from hell. We had a good time, I think. He’s such a flirt though. He really fancied Midnight. Was sooo gutted that she was actually a straight man. Think it almost turned him celibate.’⁴
  • ✤ Several young flirts about town had a design to cast us out of the fashionable world.⁵
• An act of flirting.
• A tentative or brief, passing engagement with something.
  • ✤ However, after a brief flirt with socialist realism, this method was abandoned and strict controls were removed after 1948. By the early 1950s, writers had earned the right to use any method and to experiment.⁶
  • ✤ Manufacturers are being stung into action on both sides of the Atlantic as climbers consult their lawyers after a flirt with gravity. Of course responsible manufacturers already exercise great care with all aspects of safety and testing.⁷
  • ✤ Only two years older than André, this bespectacled bookworm had, after a flirt with the surrealists, settled down as the editor of Gallimard’s literary monthly, Nouvelle Revue Française, better known by its acronym NRF.⁸
  • ✤ However, the later rabbinic Law demands from a Jew who wishes to return to Judaism after a flirt with another religion, to go through giyur, conversion requirements, like any Gentile who wishes to enter the Covenant of Israel.⁹
  • ✤ Receiving a chair in Stockholm 1904 – after a passing flirt with the Historical School and social reform – he became an enigmatic Walrasian.¹⁰
  • ✤ Lafayette Ron Hubbard was acquainted for some time with John “Jack” Whiteside Parsons (1914–1952), the James Dean of the occult, who was a rocket engineer and, after a brief flirt with Marxism, became interested in witchcraft and voodoo…¹¹
• (dialectal) A brief shower (of rain or snow).
  • ✤ In the course of the month, there were three flirts of snow, […]¹²
  • ✤ [page 59:] A flirt of snow; after which, mild and pleasant weather, (with occasional showers) continued through the remainder of the month.
    [page 220:] The medium temperature of this month was 45, and it produced much mild and pleasant weather, interspersed with some rainy days, and a few flirts of snow, and frosty nights.¹³
  • ✤ … and we still trusted to accomplish the Malnitzer Pass on the morrow. Our hopes fell to zero as during the night an ominous wind howled over the roof, and shook our casements furiously. Morning broke with chilling flirts of rain.¹⁴
  • ✤ But joy came in the morning: first a glimpse of blue sky between the flirts of rain, then a sign of the sun. The river was reported to be rapidly filling — never mind, unlucky Friday has passed by, and we may look for better things on Saturday.¹⁵
  • ✤ Long before their wonted time the robins came, — so early, indeed, that many a flirt of snow has stopped their nest-repairing, and sent them off shivering with the blues. They have arrived now in full force.¹⁶
  • ✤ ”[…] and I would n’t wonder ef we did n’t have a little brush of wind and quite a flirt o’ snow outen her yit.”¹⁷
  • ✤ Who cares now for hailstones skirling?
    The rushes bend to the eddies curling;
    A breath — and lo! the flag uncurling its petals blue
    Oh, spring will come! There’s a flirt of rain and a drift of light;
    Oh, Spring will come!¹⁸
  • ✤ In the haze to the extreme north the Tower of Flints arose like a celluloid ruler set floating upon its end, or like a water-color drawing of a tower that has been left in the open and whose pigment has been all but washed away by a flirt of rain.¹⁹
• (with “the”) Russula vesca, an edible woodland mushroom.

Verb

flirt (third-person singular simple present flirts, present participle flirting, simple past and past participle flirted)

• (transitive) To throw (something) with a jerk or sudden movement; to fling. [from 16th c.]
  • ✤ They flirt water in each other’s faces.
  • ✤ to flirt a glove, or a handkerchief
  • ✤ The carpenter himself, going with another man to furl the main-top-gallant-sail in a squall, was nearly pushed from the rigging by an unseen hand; and his shipmate swore that a wet hammock was flirted in his face.²⁰
  • ✤ She laughed […] while she flirted a soiled pocket-handkerchief at him.²¹
  • ✤ She [Mollie, the mare] took a place near the front and began flirting her white mane, hoping to draw attention to the red ribbons it was plaited with.²²
  • 1988, Thomas Flanagan, novel: The Tenants of Time chapter 13:
    • ✤ It is always there in Irish life, the wrist’s twist that flirts aside the decent cloth, damask or calico, and shows for a glinting instant the sharpened knife. It is not menacing at all, when you have lived your life with it. We would be lonely without our knives and our wounds.
• (archaic, intransitive) To jeer at; to mock. [16th–18th c.]
  • ✤ I am ashamed; I am scorned; I am flirted.²³
  • ✤ Asinius Pollio […], having written many invectives against Plancus, staid untill he were dead to publish them. It was rather to flurt at a blind man, and raile in a dead mans eare, and to offend a senselesse man, than incurre the danger of his revenge.²⁴
• (intransitive) To dart about; to move with quick, jerky motions. [from 16th c.]
  • ✤ Her skirt flirted around her knees like a flower petal.²⁵
• (transitive) To blurt out. [from 17th c.]
  • ✤ Chatterer flirted his tale in the saucy way he has, and his eyes twinkled.²⁶
• (intransitive) To play at courtship; to talk with light affection, to imply sexual attraction in a playful (especially conversational) way. [from 18th c.]
  • ✤ Synonyms: see Thesaurus: flirt
  • ✤ Of course, the young people flirted, for that diversion is apparently irradicable even in the “best society”.²⁷
  • ✤ Dr Hutchinson, who told jurors that he had been married for 37 years and that his son was a policeman, said he enjoyed flirting with the woman, was flattered by her attention and was anticipating patting her bottom again - but had no intention of seducing her.²⁸
• (intransitive) To experiment, or tentatively engage, with; to become involved in passing with.
  • ✤ I’ve thrown away my reputation, self-respect, money, health and happiness through the use of drugs and alcohol; I can teach her how fragile a reputation is, how a fool and their money are soon parted, and how dangerous it is to flirt with drugs.²⁹
  • ✤ The various episodes of thinkers flirting with the idea of an infinite universe, starting with early Greek speculations and running through Cusa in the Renaissance, came to fruition as a central element in the Scientific Revolution.³⁰

Adjective

flirt (not comparable)

• Flirtatious.
  • ✤ He had “large dark blue eyes, wide open, very coquet, very flirt in the way he looked at you.”³¹
  • ✤ Now Maggie knew that he was flirt and for the most part it didn’t bother her when he flirted with other girls because she knew that at the end of the day she was the one that he would end up kissing.³²
  • ✤ You know I’ve been very flirt with girls.³³

Etymology

1553, from the merger of Early Modern English flirt (“to flick”), flurt (“to mock, jibe, scorn”), and flirt, flurt (“a giddy girl”). Of obscure origin and relation. Apparently related to similar words in Germanic, all of apparently onomatopoeic origin,³⁴ compare Low German flirt (“a flick of the fingers, a light blow”), Low German flirtje (“a giddy girl”), Low German flirtje (“a flirt”), German Flittchen (“a flirt; tart; hussy”), Norwegian flira (“to giggle, titter”). Compare also Early Modern English jillflirt, gillian flirt, and flirt-gill (“a flirt”), and Scots flird (“a trifling”, also, “to jibe, jeer at, talk idly, flirt, flaunt”), which is perhaps from Middle English flerd (“mockery, fraud, deception”), from Old English fleard (“nonsense, vanity, folly, deception”); potentially related to Icelandic flærð (“trickiness, deceit”), Swedish flärd (“vanity, frivolity, flamboyance”), Dutch flard (“tatter, shred”). See flird.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /flɜːt/
• (US) IPA: /flɚt/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
• (Scotland) IPA: /flɪɾt/
• (New Zealand, Wales) IPA: /fløːt/
• (Liverpool, fair–fur merger) IPA: /fleːt/, [fleːθ̠]
• (Humberside, Teesside, fair–fur merger) IPA: /flɛːt/
• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)t

Printed 2026-09-19.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 1711 July 8 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison; Richard Steele et al.], “WEDNESDAY, June 27, 1711”, in The Spectator, number 102; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […], volume II, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton & Company, 1853, →OCLC: ↩

2. 1845 February, — Quarles [pseudonym; Edgar Allan Poe], “The Raven”, in The American Review ‎${}^{[1]}$, volume I, number II, New York, N.Y.; London: Wiley & Putnam, […], →OCLC: ↩

3. 1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard: ↩

4. 2011, Christina Jones, Never Can Say Goodbye: ↩

5. July 16, 1713, Joseph Addison, The Guardian No. 109 ↩

6. 1986, The Reader’s Adviser: ↩

7. 1988, Mountain: ↩

8. 1990, Axel Madsen, Silk Roads: The Asian Adventures of Clara and André Malraux: ↩

9. 2005, Murray J. Kohn, Is the Holocaust Vanishing?: A Survivor’s Reflections on the Academic Waning of Memory and Jewish Identity in the Post-Auschwitz Era, University Press of America, →ISBN, page 141: ↩

10. 2014, Vincent Barnett, Routledge Handbook of the History of Global Economic Thought, Routledge, →ISBN: ↩

11. 2019, Rolf Giesen, The Nosferatu Story: The Seminal Horror Film, Its Predecessors and Its Enduring Legacy, McFarland, →ISBN, page 113: ↩

12. 1842, Hazard’s United States Commercial and Statistical Register, page 218: ↩

13. 1847, Charles Peirce, A Meteorological Account of the Weather in Philadelphia: From January 1, 1790, to January 1, 1847, Including Fifty-seven Years; with an Appendix…: ↩

14. 1864, Josiah Gilbert, G. C. Churchill, The Dolomite Mountains: Excursions Through Tyrol, Carinthia, Carniola, and Friuli in 1861, 1861, and 1863: with a Geological Chapter, page 10: ↩

15. 1875, Sir Richard Francis Burton, Ultima Thule: Or, A Summer in Iceland, page 316: ↩

16. 1881, Abba Goold Woolson, Browsing Among Books: And Other Essays, page 184: ↩

17. 1903, George Savary Wasson, Cap’n Simeon’s Store, page 218: ↩

18. 1917, Elizabeth Sewell Hill, Western Waters, and Other Poems, page 61: ↩

19. 1967, Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan: ↩

20. 1847 March 30, Herman Melville, Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas; […], London: John Murray, […], →OCLC: ↩

21. 1891, Henry James, The Pupil ‎${}^{[2]}$, page 141: ↩

22. 1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC: ↩

23. 1621 (first performance), John Fletcher, “The Wild-Goose Chase; a Comedy”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1679, →OCLC, Act II, scene iii: ↩

24. 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 27, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC: ↩

25. 2012, Lenora Worth, Sweetheart Reunion: ↩

26. 1915, Thornton W. Burgess, chapter XXI, in The Adventures of Chatterer the Red Squirrel, Boston: Little, Brown, and Company: ↩

27. 1876, Louisa May Alcott, “Scarlet Stockings”, in Silver Pitchers: and Independence: ↩

28. 2006 April 22, “Accuser was flirting, says don”, in The Guardian ‎${}^{[3]}$: ↩

29. 2009, Kenneth Lavoie, Hold Daddy’s Hand: A Father’s ageless book of wisdom for his daughter: ↩

30. 2014, David R. Topper, Idolatry and Infinity: Of Art, Math, and God, page 67: ↩

31. 2005, Constance Crawford, Babette: Elisabeth Ullman Wills, page 57: ↩

32. 2010, Tasha Harper, Her Wall, page 227: ↩

33. 2016, Samra Kiyani, Love Vs. Rituals & Provocation, page 103: ↩

34. Wolfgang Pfeifer, editor (1993), “flirten”, in Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen (in German), 2nd edition, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, →ISBN ↩