Login

Green’s Dictionary of Slang

Sergeant Kite n.

also Sergeant Snap

[created by Farquhar as the title character of his play The Recruiting Officer (1706); ? underpinned by SE kite, a bird of prey/snap, the sound of a closing trap]

a recruiting sergeant.

[1706		Farquhar Recruiting Officer I i: If [...] any ’prentices have severe masters, any children have undutiful parents; if any servants have too little wages, or any husband too much wife, let them repair to the noble Serjeant Kite].
1857		Liverpool Mercury 16 Oct. 12/2: Do sergeant kite and Sergeant Kite’s masters suppose for one moment that the working men of England are such fools as to believe fictions which insult their understandings?
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict. 24: SERGEANT KITE, a recruiting sergeant. Sergeant snap has a like meaning.
1867		Framlingham Wkly News 30 Mar. 4/7: Sergeant Kite invites the War Office to consider whether, if the soldier is allowed threepence-half-penny a day, it will not be as well honestly to announce that his pay is in reality limited to that amount of coppers?
1877		Northern Whig (Belfast) 26 Mar. 7/5: Sergeant Kite has been abolished, and Charles street, his headquarters [...] What a cunning, fawning, swaggering, lying, plundering old ruffian was the gallant sergeant to be sure! a licensed hocusser and kidnapper, a chartered trafficker in flesh and blood!