Quote Originally Posted by Freedomlover
Even your precious OED says so, though you insist it doesn't. And while pointing out that we do not have language police as the French do, you appear to wish to police English usage by denying a legitimate common usage for some personal reason.
Hey, all I know is that my Concise OED that is sitting in front of me at this very minute defines Kilt as "a skirtlike garment, usu. of pleated tartan cloth and reseaching to the knees, as traditionally worn by Highland men. 2 a similar garemnt worn by women and children." and this same OED defines "skirt" as "a woman's outer grament hanging from the waist." From this is it quite difficult to come to the conclusion that the OED writers, editors and publishers believe that English speakers believe that kilts are skirts.

If you are so sure I am lying about what my copy of the OED says, why don't you go to your library and have a look in a Concise OED and tell us what you see. Better yet, why don't you find the full length version of the OED and see what it says.

Fine, the online version of the OED (Compact and not Concise) defines "kilt" as "a knee-length skirt of pleated tartan cloth, traditionally worn by men as part of Scottish Highland dress" which seems to be to be verbatim what the definition in Websters was. I would suggest that the Concise version trumphs the Compact version.

The puzzling things is that, although the online Compact version defines a kilt to be a skirt, this same version defines "skirt" to be "a woman’s outer garment fastened around the waist and hanging down around the legs." How then can a man's kilt be a skirt if a skirt is a woman's garment. An internal inconsistency!

The only lesson to be drawn (and a lesson learned by all reading your posts) is that you cannot believe everything you read on the internet. Trust the printed version!

Language is not science. Not every word needs to be seen as a sub-set of larger more general words. "Sarongs", "lava lavas" and "kilts" to not need to be seen as a subset of "skirt" just like "stemware" does not need to be seen as a subset of "cup". It is possible for a kilt just to be a kilt, skirtlike maybe but still a kilt and only a kilt.

HEY, I'm not the one with the fixed position. I recognized the ambiguity and the, as someone else called it, fuzziness. I can accept your position that a kilt is a skirt. I don't like it, but I do accept it. Can't you accept my position?