kite v.
1. to wander, to travel [SE kite, i.e. one is ‘gliding’ like a kite].
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Autobiog. of a Female Slave 237: ’Tis well [...] that you were a woman, else would it have gone hard with you. Kited through the streets with a coat of tar and a plumage of hen-feathers, you would have been treated to a rail-ride, none the most complimentary. | |
| ‘California Stage Company’ in et al. Songs of the Amer. West (1968) 55: They have and will monoloize [...] till the peoplerise, / And send them ‘kiteing’ down below, / To start a line with Bates and Rowe! | |
| ‘Steinli von Slang’ in Hans Breitmann in Church 139: Oh reater! – soopose soosh a vlight in / De vingers of me, or of you, / How we’d toorned on our heels und gon kitin / Dill no von vas left to pursue! | |
| ‘The Goophered Grapevine’ in Conjure Woman (1899) 118: Sally had gone kitin’ down de tu’n-row. | |
| Recoll. Sea-Wanderer 30: Old Knight will send him back kiting to Crapser. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Aus. Sl. Dict. 42: Kiting, restless, moving about from place to place. | |
| Inter Ocean (Chicago) 25 Jan. 34/6: If they don’t instantly hand out to you the whole works [...] you kite into the street and make for the nearest telephone. | |
| Arizona Nights 204: I had them long-laigs so they’d drop everythin’ and come kitin’ at the honk-honk of that horn. | |
| (con. 1918) Chevrons 159: That’s the goddamned regular army for you, go kiting across the landscape and devil take any one else. |
2. from kite n. (3)
(a) (also kyte) to pass a dud cheque.
| Adventures Henry Franco II 35: He stuffed half a dozen blank checks into his hat, and said he must go out and kite it to save his credit [DAE]. | |
| Wash. Post 16 Apr. 24: Who went kiting’ [sic] out t’ th’ track last Saturday [...] Why, you, you mutt-head, an’ the likes of you [sic]. | |
| Keys to Crookdom 400: Check kiting. To give a check without funds to cover. | |
| Cop Remembers 299–300: If you lose your check book in a speakeasy, [...] the usual game is to kite or raise your checks and then have girls call you up at your office or at your home and make all kinds of trouble for you. | |
| Decade 311: Let him rest his dried hunkers and watch the railroads he backed and the water power and utilities he kited. | |
| Across the Board 125: A big day for check-kiting financiers whose motto is, ‘Keep them flying’. | |
| letter 28 April in Proud Highway (1997) 377: Instead of forever kiting checks and sweating hotel bills. | |
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Sir, You Bastard 41: You do a bit of kiting as well? | |
| Gate Fever 18: The charge was deception: passing dud cheques, or kyting. | |
| Observer 10 Jan. 14: Claiming he ‘had been shagging away from home, a druggie who had been kiting cheques’. | |
| Layer Cake 87: He’d worked his way up from kiting, laying down jeckle paper with a cheque card. | |
| ‘The Dickensian Aspect’ Wire ser. 5 ep. 6 [TV script] Another woman [...] keeps getting arrested for kiting cheques and stuff . |
(b) (UK/US Und.) to smuggle letters in and out of prison; similarly passing letters within a prison.
| Flynn’s mag. 3 Jan. 665: Kite [...] to send a message. | |
| Argot: Dict. of Und. Sl. | |
| Four Steps to the Wall 14: An envelope could mean you’re kiting out for help. | |
| Parole Chief 137: The card had been ‘kited’ (smuggled) out of the institution. | |
| letter 28 Dec. in Joint (1972) 75: I’m kiting this note out with him. | |
| (con. 1920s) Warden’s Wife 137: The matrons [...] could not prevent the kiting which kept old feuds alive. | |
| Panzram (2002) 158: He also made it clear that he could no longer easily kite anything out. | |
| ‘Catheads [...] and Cho-Cho Sticks’ in Abernethy Bounty of Texas (1990) 208: kite, v. – to send out a letter illegally. |
(c) (US prison) to write a letter or note.
| Homeboy 239: Benny wouldn’t kite the Man. | |
| [journal] Gloss. of Texas Prison Sl. 8 Feb. n.p.: Kite a letter -- Inmates will use strings and paper clip hooks to ‘fish’ the kites from one cell to another until it reaches the person it is written to. |
3. (US) of a price, to raise, to inflate.
| Devil’s Lake Inter-Ocean (Dakota, ND) 5 May 8/3: The blind pigger (and his abettors) are responsible for [...] crimes which have [...] ‘kited’ our taxes sky high. |
In derivatives
a criminal who specializes in fraud involving financial paper, usually cheques.
| Newcastle Courant 2 Sept. 6/5: The disguised kiter had the shivers [...] but the copper had no idea of wasting time with what he thought to be a cadger going shallow. | |
| Cop Remembers 285: He’s a professional rubber-check artist and ‘kiter.’ (A kiter is a man who steals small checks from the mail and raises them. Rubber checks are worthless checks that bounce back for lack of funds). | |
| Sir, You Bastard 150: A very plausible and impeccably dressed kiter. | |
| Kowloon Tong 135: They were all paper-hangers, the Chinese in Hong Kong, check-kiters and price-grubbers and pay-gougers. | |
| Raiders 164: He became a pretty good ‘kiter’, able to work the stolen chequebook and [credit] card turn with a lot of panache. | |
| Widespread Panic 17: I bagged shoplifters and check kiters. |
SE in slang uses
In phrases
to rush about; to drag about.
| ‘Second from the End’ in Beef, Iron and Wine (1917) 193: He thought he’d kite me around all-night restaurants. |