a. [f. FLIRTATION; see -OUS.]
a. Of persons: Given to flirtation, inclined to flirt.
1834. C’tess Morley, Dacre, I. vi. 132. With such recommendations, it was not surprising that Dacre should find himself an object of interest to match-making mothers, flirtatious daughters, and coquettish wives.
1886. W. E. Norris, Bachelor’s Blunder, ii. (1887), 15. I believe he is rather a flirtatious young gentleman.
b. Of speech, etc.: Of or pertaining to flirtation; of the nature of flirtation.
1870. Miss Broughton, Red as Rose, I. xii. 243. And yet their talk, if she could but hear it, holds nothing obnoxiously fond or flirtatious; it might be proclaimed by the bellman in the streets.
1891. B. Harte, A First Family of Tasajara, I. ii. 58. What had promised to be an audaciously flirtatious declaration, and even a mischievous suggestion of marriage, had resolved itself into something absurdly practical and business-like.
Hence Flirtatiously, adv.; Flirtatiousness.
1863. Holme Lee, A. Warleigh’s Fortunes, II. 293–4. Any other mixed assemblage when young men and women are flirtatiously disposed.
1886. Atlantic Monthly, LVIII. Sept., 432/1. Barbara’s Vagaries, by Mary Langdon Tidball. (Harpers.) A short novel, in which the interest moves languidly in a circle about a North Carolina girl of ingenuous flirtatiousness, set in the midst of conventional people at a watering-place.
