jilt

Contracted from Scots jillet (“a giddy girl, a jill-flirt”).

• IPA^(key): /d͡ʒɪlt/

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  Rhymes: -ɪlt

jilt (plural jilts)

1. A woman who jilts a lover.
   • 1683, Thomas Otway, The Soldiers Fortune:

     And has she been long a Jilt? has she practiſed the Trade for any Time?

jilt (third-person singular simple present jilts, present participle jilting, simple past and past participle jilted)

1. (transitive) To cast off capriciously or unfeelingly, as a lover; to deceive in love.
   • 1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], chapter 4, in An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Eliz[abeth] Holt, for Thomas Basset, […], →OCLC, book I, page 20:

     Tell a man passionately in love, that he is jilted; bring a score of witnesses of the falsehood of his mistress, it is ten to one but three kind words of hers shall invalidate all their testimonies.

   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:

     The humor of my proposition appealed more strongly to Miss Trevor than I had looked for, and from that time forward she became her old self again; for, even after she had conquered her love for the Celebrity, the mortification of having been jilted by him remained.

Borrowed from Arabic جِلْد‎ (jild, “skin, hide”).

jilt (definite accusative jilti, plural jiltler)

1. skin