kilt
/kɪlt
/noun
A garment resembling a knee-length skirt of pleated tartan cloth, traditionally worn by men as part of Scottish Highland dress and now also worn by women and girls.The abstract elements of beadwork patterns play a key role in flagging difference - like the tartan kilts of Scottish clans....
- The venerable Leith-based firm, best known for its Highland dress, kilts and tartans, boosted sales by around £4m from its pool of more than 80 menswear outlets in Japanese department stores last year.
- In this way, the entire Scottish nation adopted the bogus Highland symbols of kilt and tartan.
verb [with object]
1Gather (a garment or material) in vertical pleats: (as adjective kilted) kilted skirts...
- I looked longingly at my breeches, but picked up the next best thing, one of the long kilted skirts I used for riding.
- If the Scottish Tourist Board - or whatever daft name they now go under - were to design a mock Highland town full of tartan tat and kilted kitsch for the benefit of tourists, they might very well come up with Inveraray.
- Over 40' and up to 44' use four yards in a kilted skirt and five yards in a proper.
2 (usually kilt something up) Tuck up one’s skirts around one’s body.She kilted up her kirtle, because of the dew that she saw lying deep on the grass, and so went her way down through the garden....
- So she kilted up her petticoats and started to run home.
Derivatives
kilted
/ adjective ...- Tourists are piped on to the train by a young kilted boy on the platform as steam gathers into clouds which float gently overhead.
- I think Papa's tale involved a fight; perhaps that's where he and his buddies teased some kilted Scotsmen and found out why they were called the ladies from hell.
- By the time you read this, I will have Stripped the Willow and done the best approximation I can to the Dashing White Sergeant, as I ring out the old century with fellow kilted revellers in St Andrews.
Origin
Middle English (as a verb in the sense 'tuck up around the body'): of Scandinavian origin; compare with Danish kilte (op) 'tuck (up)' and Old Norse kilting 'a skirt'. The noun dates from the mid 18th century.