Meaning

noun a kind of person

originInherited from Middle English ilke, from Old English ilca, conjectured as from Proto-Germanic *ilīkaz, a compound of *iz and *-līkaz from the noun *līką (“body”). The sense of “type”, “kind” is from the application of the phrase of that ilk to families: the word thus came to mean family.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0