Chapter Kit Cats to Knights Baronets of K by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Kit Cats to Knights Baronets

Kit Cats Mutton pies; so called from Christopher Cat, the pastrycook, who excelled in these pasties. (See above.)

Kit's Coty House on the road between Rochester and Maidstone, a well-known cromlech, is Katigern's or Kitigern's coty house - that is, the house or tomb of Kitigern, made of coits or huge flat stones. (See Hackell's Coit and Devil's Coit .)
   Katigern was the brother of Vortimer, and leader of the Britons, who was slain in the battle of Aylesford or Epsford, fighting against Hengist and Horsa. Lambarde calls it Citscotehouse (1570). The structure consists of two upright side-stones, one standing in the middle as a support or tenon, and a fourth imposed as a roof. Numberless stones lie scattered in the vicinity. Often spelt “Kitt's Cotty House.”

Kitchen Any relish eaten with dry bread, as cheese, bacon, dried fish, etc.

“A hungry heart wad scarce seek better kitchen to a barley scone.”- Sir W. Scott: The Pirate, chap. xi.

Kitchenmaid (Mrs.). So Queen Elizabeth called Lord Mountjoy, her lord-deputy in Ireland. In one of her letters to Lord Mountjoy she writes:-

“With your frying-pan and other kitchen-stuff you have brought to their last home more rebels than those that promised more and did less.”

Kite (A), in legal phraseology, is a junior counsel who is allotted at an assize court to advocate the cause of a prisoner who is without other defence. For this service he receives a guinea as his honorarium. A kite on Stock Exchange means a worthless bill. An honorarium given to a barrister is in reality a mere kite. (See below, Kite-Flying .)

Kite-flying To fly the kite is to “raise the wind,” or obtain money on bills, whether good or bad. It is a Stock Exchange phrase, and means as a kite flutters in the air by reason of its lightness, and is a mere toy, so these bills fly about, but are light and worthless. (See Stock Exchange Slang .)

Kitely (2 syl.). A jealous city merchant in Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour.

Kittle of Fish A pretty kittle of fish. A pretty muddle, a bad job. Corruption of “kiddle of fish.” A kiddle is a basket set in the opening of a weir for catching fish. Perhaps the Welsh hidl or hidyl, a strainer. (See Kettle .)

Klaus (Peter). The prototype of Rip Van Winkle, whose sleep lasted twenty years. Pronounce Klows. (See Santa Klaus .)

Klephts (The) etymologically means robbers, but came to be a title of distinction in modern Greece. Those Greeks who rejected all overtures of their Turkish conquerors, betook themselves to the mountains, where they kept up for several years a desultory warfare, supporting themselves by raids on Turkish settlers. Aristoteles Valaoritis (born 1824) is the great “poet of the Klephts.” (See Nineteenth Century, July, 1891, p. 130.)

Knack Skill in handiwork. The derivation of this word is a great puzzle. Minshew suggests that it is a mere variant of knock. Cotgrave thinks it a variant of snap. Others give the German knacken (to sound).

Knave A lad, a garcon, a servant. (Anglo-Saxon, cnáfa; German, knabe.) The knave of clubs, etc., is the son or servant of the king and queen thereof. In an old version of the Bible we read: “Paul, a knave of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle,” etc. (Rom. i. 1).
   This version, we are told, is in the Harleian Library, but is generally supposed to be a forgery. But, without doubt, Wycliff (Rev. xii. 5, 13) used the compound “Knave-child,” and Chaucer uses the same in the Man of Lawe's Tale, line 5130.

Knave of Hearts (A). A flirt.