kite

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“
Stuck on to what they calls a kite, an accommodation bill.

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Definitions (54)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (10)

  1. noun A light framework covered with cloth, plastic, or paper, designed to be flown in the wind at the end of a long string.
  2. noun Any of the light sails of a ship that are used only in a light wind.
  3. noun Any of various predatory birds of the hawk family Accipitridae, having a long, often forked tail and long pointed wings.
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Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (33)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (3)

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Examples (50)

  • The real purpose of that was to get the boy out of the way, in case there should be danger Monk decided the kite was a good job. —  048 - The Derrick Devil
  • That intrepid explorer had seen and named the creature; it was a knife-kite, the same sort of beast that had accounted for the death of one of his men. —  Astounding Stories January, 1935
  • They were to ascend like a kite, the pilot explained, and then when they were near the full extension of the line, they would shut the stove down, and stabilize in that one spot like any other kite, hanging some thousand hands over the landscape. —  THE YEARS OF RICE AND SALT - Kim Stanley Robinson
  • First she was like a kite, and then a scrap of paper, and at the very last she was a rapidly tumbling speck. —  Omni: Winter 1995
  • The tail of the kite is the Maydan, the poorest part of Damascus, but rich in ruined mosques and hammams, and houses which at first sight look as though they are in decay. —  The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II
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Etymologies (4)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English, bird of prey, from Old English cȳta.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (3)

  1. Early modern English also improperly kighte; from Middle English kite, kete, from Anglo-Saxon cy¯ta, a kite (bird). Cf. Welsh cud, a falcon, also flight, velocity.
  2. from kite, n., 1 and 3.
  3. Also kyte; apparently irreg. from Middle English *kit, *kid (found only in comp.: see kidney), from Anglo-Saxon cwith = Icelandic kvidhr = Swedish qued, the womb, = Goth, kwithus, the belly, perhaps = Greek γαστήρ, the belly, = Sanskrit jathara, the belly: see gaster. Hence prob., in disguised composition, kidney.
 

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/kaɪt/
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