If you talk about people or things of the same ilk, you mean people or things of the same type as a person or thing that has been mentioned. He currently terrorises politicians and their ilk on `Newsnight' Where others of his ilk have battled against drugs, Gabriel's problems have centred on his marriage. = kind. Word History: When one uses ilk, as in the phrase men of his ilk, one is using a word with an ancient pedigree even though the sense of ilk, "kind or sort," is actually quite recent, having been first recorded at the end of the 18th century. This sense grew out of an older use of ilk in the phrase of that ilk, meaning "of the same place, territorial designation, or name." This phrase was used chiefly in names of landed families, Guthrie of that ilk meaning "Guthrie of Guthrie." "Same" is the fundamental meaning of the word. The ancestors of ilk, Old English ilca and Middle English ilke, were common words, usually appearing with such words as the or that, but the word hardly survived the Middle Ages in those uses. Variant of ilka. a particular type = kind of that/his/their etc ilk (ilk (12-19 centuries), from ilca)