the.com/flirt

means To behave playfully or teasingly with someone in a way that signals romantic or sexual interest, without committing to anything real.

from A word of murky, delightful origin — appearing in English around the 1500s-1600s meaning a quick, flicking or jerking movement (a flirt of a fan, a sharp flick of the wrist). It likely echoes the sound-symbolic family of words like 'flick' and 'flit,' all suggesting something darting and light. From a sudden flick of movement, the sense slid toward a flick of attention or affection — a flutter of interest tossed someone's way without real weight behind it. Some early uses also linked it to flighty, trifling behavior generally, before it narrowed to the romantic teasing we mean today. No one can trace it to a single tidy source — it seems to have fluttered into the language much as the behavior flutters through a room.