Kid origin of the word

English[edit]

Pronunciation[edit]

• IPA^(key): /kɪd/
• Rhymes: -ɪd

Etymology 1[edit]

From Middle English kide, from Old Norse kið (“young goat”), from Proto-Germanic *kidją, *kittīną (“goatling, kid”), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *gʰaydn-, *ǵʰaydn- (“goat”) or Proto-Indo-European *gidʰ- (“kid, goatling, little goat”). Compare Swedish and Danish kid, German Kitz and Kitze, Albanian kedh and kec.

Sense of child since 1590s as cant, since 1840s in informal use.^[1][2]

Noun[edit]

kid (plural kids)

1. A young goat.
   • 1719, Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe: Friday’s Education,

     I went, indeed, intending to kill a kid out of my own flock; and bring it home and dress it; but as I was going I saw a she-goat lying down in the shade, and two young kids sitting by her.

   He treated the oxen like they didn’t exist, but he treated the goat kid like a puppy.

2. Of a female goat, the state of being pregnant: in kid.

   • 2008, Monte Dwyer, Red In The Centre: The Australian Bush Through Urban Eyes, Monyer Pty Ltd, page 200:

     «Those little ones there, probably no more than ten, fifteen kilos,» he says, pointing out three goats about the same size as the cattle dog, «they would be in kid.»

3. Kidskin.

   Synonym: kid leather

   • 1912, Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs: Letter 3,

     I have three pairs of kid gloves. I’ve had kid mittens before from the Christmas tree, but never real kid gloves with five fingers.

4. (uncountable) The meat of a young goat.

   Synonym: cabrito

   • 1820, Walter Scott, chapter VII, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC, pages 85–86:

     So saying, he gathered together, and brought to a flame, the decaying brands which lay scattered on the ample hearth; took from the larger board a mess of pottage and seethed kid, placed it upon the small table at which he had himself supped, and, without waiting the Jew’s thanks, went to the other side of the hall; […].

5. A young antelope.
6. (informal) A child (usually), teenager, or young adult; a juvenile.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:child

   She’s a kid. It’s normal for her to have imaginary friends.

   • 1838, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], “Wherein Oliver Is Delivered over to Mr. William Sikes”, in Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy’s Progress. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 12:

     “So you’ve got the kid,” said Sikes, when they had all reached the room: closing the door as he spoke.¶ “Yes, here he is,” replied Nancy.¶ “Did he come quiet?” inquired Sikes.¶ “Like a lamb,” rejoined Nancy.

   • 1955, C. S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

     «I should never dream of calling a kid like you a woman,» said Digory loftily.

   • 2007 July 5, Barack Obama, Remarks of Senator Barack Obama to the National Education Association Annual Meeting,

     Our kids are why all of you are in this room today. Our kids are why you wake up wondering how you’ll make a difference and go to bed thinking about tomorrow’s lesson plan. Our kids are why you walk into that classroom every day even when you’re not getting the support, or the pay, or the respect that you deserve — because you believe that every child should have a chance to succeed; that every child can be taught.

   • 2019 October, Ian Walmsley, “Cleaning up”, in Modern Railways, page 44:

     Network Rail is now the biggest kid in the playground, so if it doesn’t want to play it doesn’t have to, and the trees still fall down every time someone gives a low pressure system a name.

7. (informal) A person whose childhood took place in a particular time period or area.

   Only ’90s kids will remember this toy.

   He’s been living in Los Angeles for years now, but he’s a Florida kid.

8. (informal) One’s son or daughter, regardless of age.

   He was their youngest kid.

9. (in the vocative) Used as a form of address for a child, teenager or young adult.

   No, kid, you didn’t do anything wrong; they did!
10. (colloquial) An inexperienced person or one in a junior position.
    • 2007 June 3, Eben Moglen, speech, Freeing the Mind: Free Software and the end of proprietary culture,

      I remember as a kid lawyer working at IBM in the summer of 1983, when a large insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut, for the first time asked to buy 12000 IBM PCs in a single order.

11. (dated) A deception; an act of kidding somebody.
12. (nautical) A small wooden mess tub in which sailors received their food.
    • 1830, James Fenimore Cooper, The Water-witch, Or, The Skimmer of the Seas

      peaceable, well-disposed chaps as ever eat duff (dough) out of a kid

    • We fasted till night, when one of the boys came along with a couple of «kids» containing a thin, saffron-coloured fluid, with oily particles floating on top. The young wag told us this was soup: it turned out to be nothing more than oleaginous warm water.

13. (vulgar, slang, usually in the plural) semen, ejaculate.

Derived terms[edit]

Translations[edit]

Verb[edit]

kid (third-person singular simple present kids, present participle kidding, simple past and past participle kidded)

1. (transitive, colloquial) To make a fool of (someone).
2. (transitive, colloquial) To dupe or deceive (someone).

   • 1965, James Holledge, What Makes a Call Girl?, London: Horwitz Publications, page 76:

     «They are all very suspicious about the wording. I am always thinking up new ways of kidding them.»

3. (transitive, colloquial) To make a joke with (someone).
4. (intransitive) Of a goat, to give birth.

   • 2008, Monte Dwyer, Red In The Centre: The Australian Bush Through Urban Eyes, Monyer Pty Ltd, page 200:

     «They can kid twice a year if things are right, and they often throw twins and triplets.»

5. (intransitive, colloquial) To joke.

   You’re kidding!

   Only kidding

Translations[edit]

See also[edit]

• suede
• kid on

Etymology 2[edit]

Compare Welsh cidysen.

Noun[edit]

kid (plural kids)

1. A fagot; a bundle of heath and furze.

   • 1611, Gervase Markham, Countrey Contentments:

     Shake down into the bottom of your Ponds good long Kids or Faggots of brush-wood.

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• kid on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams[edit]

• IDK, idk

French[edit]

Etymology[edit]

English kid

Pronunciation[edit]

• IPA^(key): /kid/

Noun[edit]

kid m (plural kids)

1. (colloquial) kid

   Synonyms: gamin, gosse, (regional) minot

Hungarian[edit]

Etymology[edit]

ki (“who”) +‎ -d (“your, of yours”, possessive suffix)

Pronunciation[edit]

• IPA^(key): [ˈkid]
• Hyphenation: kid

Pronoun[edit]

kid

1. second-person singular single-possession possessive of ki

Declension[edit]

Inflection (stem in -e-, front unrounded harmony)
	singular	plural
nominative	kid	—
accusative	kidet	—
dative	kidnek	—
instrumental	kiddel	—
causal-final	kidért	—
translative	kiddé	—
terminative	kidig	—
essive-formal	kidként	—
essive-modal	—	—
inessive	kidben	—
superessive	kiden	—
adessive	kidnél	—
illative	kidbe	—
sublative	kidre	—
allative	kidhez	—
elative	kidből	—
delative	kidről	—
ablative	kidtől	—
non-attributive possessive — singular	kidé	—
non-attributive possessive — plural	kidéi	—

Norwegian Bokmål[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Danish kid. Doublet of kje (“goatling”) from Norwegian kje.

Pronunciation[edit]

• IPA^(key): /çidː/

Noun[edit]

kid n (definite singular kidet, indefinite plural kid, definite plural kida or kidene)

1. the meat of a goatling

References[edit]

• “kid” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

Norwegian Nynorsk[edit]

Noun[edit]

kìd n (definite singular kìdet, indefinite plural kìd, definite plural kìdi)

1. (pre-1917) alternative form of kje

Sikaritai[edit]

Noun[edit]

kid

1. banana

Further reading[edit]

• Heljä & Duane Clouse, Kirikiri and the Western Lakes Plains Languages (1993)

Sumerian[edit]

Romanization[edit]

kid

1. Romanization of 𒆤 (kid)

Swedish[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Old Swedish kiþ, from Old Norse kið, from Proto-Germanic *kidją‚ from Proto-Indo-European *gidʰ-.

Pronunciation[edit]

• Rhymes: -iːd

Noun[edit]

kid n

1. a young deer

Declension[edit]

Declension of kid
	Singular	Plural
Indefinite	Definite	Indefinite	Definite
Nominative	kid	kidet	kid	kiden
Genitive	kids	kidets	kids	kidens

Derived terms[edit]

• rådjurskid

Volapük[edit]

Noun[edit]

kid (nominative plural kids)

1. kiss

Declension[edit]

  People have not always called little children kids. The reasons why a baby goat got mixed up with a human offspring is quite bizarre indeed.

  Going back to The Anglo-Saxon times the word for child /ˈtʃajəld/ was instead spelled cild. In ancient times the common people often failed to pronounce the letter ‘l.’ The similarity of sound between this name for a child and that for a young goat led to the use of ‘kid’ as a synonym for ‘child.’

  In this time period childbirth rates were very low due to children not surviving past a certain age, disease and plagues, infertile parents due to genetics, etc. Many married couples were desperate to have children. So desperate in fact, that they would be willing to purchase children.

  This unfortunately led to a lot of desperate people falling victim to one of the most popular bait-and-switch scams of the day. The primary culprit was none other than the noble goat herder. The problem many goat herders had at this time was that goat fertility was skyrocketing in direct opposition to the low fertility of humans.

  Now, the abundance of goats was a nice problem to have for goatherders but what could one do about it? They could sell the extra goats as meat but this offered little money and they did not want to waste a young goat in such a way. They came upon with a more lucrative scheme that would earn them far more money. They got the inspiration from a popular scam that had been going around at the time.

  Some goatherders must have heard of the pig in a poke (a poke is a type of blanket or bag) scam. The way this scam worked was somebody would go to market looking to buy a pig. A scammer would instead put a cat in a poke and sell it to the unsuspecting victim. The victim would then later let the cat out of the bag. Cats were quite common and it was far cheaper to sell a cat in a bag than the more prized pig. Thus the two popular phrases are connected to this scam.

  A similar kind of bait-and-switch was used by goat herders whenever they would don a disguise and present themselves to the barren couple promising them that if they would part with a sizable amount of money they would receive the next morning on their doorstep a child that somebody had abandoned and it would be their child.

  Needless to say the couple was horrified to wake up the next morning not see a child standing there waiting for their new mom and dad to take care of them, but a kid goat tied to the door and really hungry. Meanwhile the goatherdered had plenty of time after the delivery at night to get rid of the disguise and be on his merry way with a large amount of cash.

  Because the goatherder was clever enough to disguise himself and visit a far off village it did no good for the scammed to complain or try to describe the culprit; they were stuck either eating the goat for food or raising it as their own child. These kid owners now had just spent a huge chunk of their life savings. They also realized that having kids was just not in the cards, so they opted to raise the kid as their own and make due with what they were given.

  The court in many jurisdictions at the time tried to stop these goat bait-and-switch scams by insisting that contracts be drawn up and signed before a deal was made in hope that these goatherder scammers could be prosecuted for failing to deliver one what they promised to deliver.

  The problem with these contracts is that many of the peasants and other people of the day were illiterate and if they if somewhat literate, the loose spelling of words (as mentioned at the start of this article) made for an interesting legal loophole in early contract law.

  The goatherder could draw up a contract and still get away with the scam in court by taking advantage of the fact that people commonly read out cild as in a baby goat kid. Written in such a way, a scammer could promise in writing to have a cild on your doorstep by tomorrow morning and would not be violating the contract when a baby goat was there instead. So due to this tricky writing in contracts the courts had to dismiss many of these cases and the goatherders walked away with the money unscaved.

  As a matter of fact, this is also where the term kidnapping originates; some contracts were even bold enough to state that they would nap (snatch away) a kid for the new parents for a price. This snatching away was not even considered a further crime after the fact due to there being a goat instead of a stolen child and that the goat was not stolen but the former property of the goatherder committing the crime.

  In an ultimate twist of cruel irony and humor the goatherders put in the contracts that the new ‘parents’ were to raise the kid as their own. So the new owners of a goat kid could even sell it to anybody or eat the goat because that would, in the eyes of the court, be tantamount to selling off or eating one’s own child.

  The origin of the word kidding originates from this practice. So if you were kidding somebody back then, you were pulling this scam on them.

  Now, if the thought of finding a goat at your doorstep still seems unusual then the following from Northern European Scandinavia adds another interesting twist to finding a goat on your doorstep.

  In ancient pagan Scandinavia there is the Norse god of thunder Thor. Thor rode the sky in a chariot drawn by two goats, Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr. The goatherders in this area had a similar practice of leaving extra kids on the doorsteps of unsuspecting people. Those that found baby goats here, however, were more enthusiastic about it than in the previously mentioned areas. According to Norse superstition, finding a mysterious goat at your door in the morning means Thor has given you one of his goats that were used to drive his chariot. This then means the new owners must raise this goat as if it were their own human child or else the mighty god Thor in his anger would strike one down with lightning or a bad harvest.

  To gain the blessings of a good harvest the Scandinavian goat parents would then take the last sheaf of grain bundled in the harvest that was credited with magical properties as the spirit of the harvest fed to the goats. Some of the grain was saved for the Yule celebrations, called among other things «Julbocken» (the Yule goat).

  Also at Yule young men in costumes would walk between houses singing songs, enacting plays and performing pranks. The group of Yuletide/Christmas characters would often include the Yule goat, a rowdy and sometimes scary creature demanding gifts, very much the experience people have when they first have a child.

  In later centuries objects made out of straw or roughly-hewn wood could also be called the Yule goat, and a Scandinavian prank popular back then was to place this Yule goat in a neighbour’s front door without them noticing; the family successfully pranked had to get rid of it in the same way. This simulates the time-old tradition of putting a young goat on somebody’s doorstep overnight as we have been discussing here.

  The Yule tradition then molded into, such as in Sweden, a goat man that appear before Christmas to make sure Yule preparations were done right and to make sure you were taking care of your children… or kids. In the 19th century people would dress up traditionally as goat man and offer gifts to people. This symbolically links the rewards of raising Thor’s goats and the rewards you get when you raise your children kindly and they return the favor by taking care of you in old age. This figure later evolved into jultomte (Father Christmas/Santa Claus).

You can see below a large modern representation of a Yule goat created for the Yule season: Yule Goat

Kid, likely borrowed from Old Norse, named a “young goat” (1200s) long before it did “child.” Kid as “child” was a slang term in late 1500s, familiar, though informal, by the late 1800s.

m ∫ r ∫

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