Thank you. And when would you use it? Is it formal or informal? Jocular or serious?Not often.
;-)Hi Linguist, thank you. This is very kind of you to show me these things.
Couldn't a rape be a rope?
A lot of words that have /əʊ/ in Recieved Pronunciation have become /eɪ/ in Scots. For example, the common literary spelling of our 'so is 'sae'.
My dictionary (Merriam-Webster) says that the basic (but chiefly Scots now) meaning of this word is "same". It's said to come from the same root as "like".
The "kind" meaning is not etymologized there, but they say it comes from the "same" meaning here: ilk - definition of ilk by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.
'Of that kind.' 'Of that family.' 'Of that kin.'
The "each" meaning is derived from the same OE word as "each". "Ilka" is said to come from "ilk"+"a", where "a" is an indefinite article.
So it seems they are different words etymologically.
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