Sunday, June 15, 2008

Etymology 101: A Free Public Service From The Friendly Folks At Apoloblogology



Kite

Unsurprisingly, this word originally referred to a bird, and was sort of onomatopoeic, as determined by people that thought the variety of hawk in question kept yelling "kite!" over and over again in its one-word vocabulary. This puts the hawk in the category of other members of the animal kingdom who are named after the sounds they make, such as the Moo and the Poison-Arrow Frog.

The first instance of the word being applied to the flying children's toy is in 1665, because of its way of hovering in the air like a bird. And of course, if someone tells you to "go fly a kite," and they don't seem to mean it in a nice way, they're probably referring to the fact that the original bird after which the kite was named is a scavenger and eater of garbage, a repast that they encourage you yourself to indulge in rather than continuing to annoy them.

No comments:

Post a Comment