Origin of the word kite"

[Mary Krimmel]

Fascinating story! Thank you.

Mary Krimmel

At 07:03 AM 1/30/03 -0500, you wrote:
>Mary,
> On a web page about Math words I keep for my students ,
>www.pballew.net/etyindex.html , I have the following which relates to
>(as far as I know) the first historical reference of a kite, and it
>also involves mathematics ... of course in chinese the word was Feng
>Zheng, not kite. I was wondering by what name a Chinese mathematician
>might refer to the shape we now call a kite.
>
>---------------------
>During the summer of 2002 while visiting a Chinese exhibit, Land of
>the Dragon, at the Dennos museum in Traverse City, Michigan, I
>happened upon the following historical tidbit about kites. I have
>paraphrased from notes scribbled at the scene.
>
>In 206 BC, General Han Hsin sought to take the castle of an enemy. He
>flew a kite over the center of the castle, and measured the amount of
>string that was used. Then he had his scholars calculate the distance
>to the center of the castle on ground level, and dug a tunnel under
>the walls of the castle to the described distance and emerged to take
>the fortress by complete surprise. This little military anecdote is
>the first historical mention of a kite.
>
>------------------------------------------
>
>Pat Ballew
>Lakenheath, UK

------- End of Forwarded Message

[bryan dewing]

is the bird named after the toy or what? i would like to know, i live
in London, like most places you do not see these birds, well today i
saw two and recognised them because of thier "kite" like appearance.
So what came first the bird or the early gadget?

[Sarah Seastone]

In his book, The Words of Mathematics, An Etymological Dictionary of
Mathematical Terms Used in English (Mathematical Association of
America), Steven Schwartzman says:

kite (noun)
a native English word. The flying toy called a kite takes its name
from the bird of the same name, which typically has a long, forked
tail like that of a man-made kite. The bird, in turn, is presumed to
be named for the sound it makes, as are the cuckoo, whipporwill, and
other birds. In geometry, a kite is a convex quadrilateral with two
distinct pairs of adjacent equal sides; contrast that with a
parallelogram, in which the equal sides are opposite each other. The
geometric kite is named after the characteristic shape of many
popular toy kites.

This entry from the Dr. Math archives might be of interest:

Is Kite the True Name?
http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/55460.html

Sarah Seastone
Editor, Archivist, Web Page Designer
The Math Forum
http://mathforum.org/
sa...@mathforum.org