Ilk means people of that same stripe or breed. Others like them, and usually not a compliment.
It appears almost entirely in the phrase of that ilk or of his ilk, and modern use is nearly always dismissive, since grouping somebody with their ilk is a way of refusing to consider them individually. The original Scottish use was quite different and meant of the same name, as in a landowner whose surname matched their estate. That sense survives only in Scottish titles.
1nounilkA type or class of person, usually mentioned with disapproval.
“He had no patience with politicians of that ilk.”
Also accepted in games: kind, sort, type
Ilk means the same. Old English ilca meant the very same, and the phrase of that ilk, used of a family whose name matched their place, was misread as meaning of that kind.
Proto-Germanic
*ilīkaz
Old English
ilca
Middle English
ilke
English, today
ilk
Built 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