Today, the term coquettish is often used interchangeably with flirtatious, deriving from the noun coquette, which originally referred to a flirtatious woman. Interestingly, in the past, a coquette could be of any gender and was borrowed from the French term coquet, meaning “male flirt” (with a gradual shift in gender association over time). Even more intriguingly, coquet literally translates to “little cock” (like a rooster), as male chickens were believed to display a proud and provocative demeanor. The term coquet is a diminutive of coq, which was spelled as coc in Old French (the origin of our word cockcoccus and Frankish kok with similar meanings. It is likely that the term is onomatopoeic, imitating the sound of a chicken, possibly through Proto-Germanic kukkaz.
