From: BillK (bill@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Fri Jun 20 2003 - 03:23:55 MDT
Sorry Steve
The dictionaries and common usage agree with Damien's use of ilk. You
are correct about the origins of ilk, but not how it is commonly used in
English from 19th century onwards.
In Canada, of course, you have to beware of ilk wandering in front of
you on the highway.
BillK
Re: ilk
(from Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)
ilk noun [S] MAINLY DISAPPROVING
a particular type:
The worst of her criticism was reserved for journalists, photographers
and others of their ilk.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth
Edition. 2000.
...Type or kind: can't trust people of that ilk.
Scots The same. Used following a name to indicate that the one named
resides in an area bearing the same name: Duncan of that ilk
[Middle English ilke, same, from Old English ilca. See i- in
Indo-European Roots.]
Word History: When one uses ilk, as in the phrase men of his ilk,
one is using a word with an ancient pedigree even though the sense of
ilk, “kind or sort,” is actually quite recent, having been first
recorded at the end of the 18th century. This sense grew out of an older
use of ilk in the phrase of that ilk, meaning “of the same place,
territorial designation, or name.” This phrase was used chiefly in names
of landed families, Guthrie of that ilk meaning “Guthrie of Guthrie.”
“Same” is the fundamental meaning of the word. The ancestors of ilk, Old
English ilca and Middle English ilke, were common words, usually
appearing with such words as the or that, but the word hardly survived
the Middle Ages in those uses.
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