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