Something interesting happened to me a week ago when I was at work. Some coworkers and I were making jokes in our lunch break. I told a friend that he looked different and cute because he was dressing really nice. He smiled at me and said, "You are such a flirt!" I thought he was giving me a compliment. Then, one of my female friends tried to convince me that what he said was an awful thing to say to a woman, and that I needed to talk to him about the issue.
Before jumping into any conclusions, I decided to look at all the different meanings that dictionaries and thesauruses provide for the term. The dictionary definition of a flirt is stated as follows: "one who flirts; a woman who acts with giddiness, or plays at courtship; a coquette; a pert girl". Other thesauruses give the following synonyms for the word: "banter, chat up, come hither, come on, coquet, dally, dilly-dally, disport, fool, gold dig, hit on, lead on, lollygag, ogle, philander, pick up, pitch, play, proposition, sport, string along, tease, toy, trifle, vamp, wanton, wink at, wolf-whistle, etc".
After reading and getting more and more confused, I decided to ask some of my friends what meaning they give to this term and under what circumstances they use it. For my male friends, a flirt is a woman who uses playful behavior intended to arouse sexual interest. For most of them, a flirt is a seductive woman who uses her sex appeal to exploit men. They said that flirt is the synonym of words like: heartbreaker, teaser, seductive, and playful. In summary, they concluded that a woman is a flirt when she tries to make men crazy using her way of speaking, walking or simply by her looks. .
I asked my female friends, too. They said that a flirt is a wanton man or a seducer. It is a man that talks or behaves amorously, but without serious intentions; or a man that behaves carelessly or indifferently in a given situation. Most of them talk about the term as if they were angry with some guy, maybe because of a bad experience in their lives.
