Coquetry

Coquetry (pronounced koh-ki-tree or koh-ke-tree)

(1) Actions designed to excite erotic attention, without intending to reciprocate such feelings (now applied exclusively of women towards men); flirtatious teasing.

(2) A display of affectation of amorous interest or enticement (now applied exclusively of women towards men); flirtation.

(3) The behavior or the arts of a coquette.

1650s: The English coquetry (effort to attract from a motive of vanity or amusement, trifling in love) was from the French coquetterie, from the verb coqueter (to flirt).  Coquèterie is the modern spelling, now understood as “vanity, knack for fashion and appearance”.  The suffux –eire was from the Old French –erie and equivalent to -ier +‎ -ie; it was used, inter alia, to denote nouns describing qualities or properties.  Coquetry is a noun, coquet is a noun & verb, coquettish is an adjective and the noun plural is coquetries.

Coquèterie (1911), oil on canvas by Félix Vallotton (1865–1925).  At least one critic translated coquèterie as used by Vallotton as “sauciness”.

The original form in French was the early seventeenth century coquet (a beau (literally “a little cockerel”)), the construct being coq (cockerel) + -et (the masculine diminutive suffix) which came to referred to “someone apparently amorous who seeks to appear romantically attractive out of vanity", a meaning derived from the idea of "to swagger or strut like a cock (although the bird’s reputation for lustfulness may have been influential)).  The word was applied to both sexes but after circa 1700 came to be used exclusively of flirtatious women (who we now call a coquette), the adjective coquettish (resembling a coquette, characterized by coquetry) dating from 1702; the extension of meaning to the point where it extended to become also a pure synonym for flirtation (divorced from purpose), seems not to have developed until the late twentieth century.  In ornithology taxonomy, coquettes are several species of hummingbird in the genus Lophornis, and the Racket-tailed coquette in the genus Discosura.

A coquettish Lindsay Lohan, 2016.

Coquetry is a word which must be used with care because it describes behavior, the art and science of the coquette, not her purpose or intent.  An act of coquetry will always be flirtatious but while it (1) may be deployed to seek courtship, (2) there may be hidden agendas or ulterior motives or (3) she may be doing it just for practice or for no particular reason, there being women for whom coquettishness is either habit or calling.