![]() ![]() When someone who is incarcerated has a prohibited item and no place to hide it, they might keister (or keester) it, inserting it into their rear for safe-keeping. It is the outward proof that the poor guy who wears it has no friends.” 2. Green’s Dictionary of Slang dates the term’s published use back to 1933, when the memoir Limey: An Englishman Joins the Gangs by James Spenser was published: “The fish uniform is the pauper’s badge in San Quentin. While it could refer to their fresh status-as in fresh fish-it might also stem from the smelly, cheap ink once used to stamp an inmate’s booking numbers on their uniform. When a person convicted of a crime first arrives in prison, they’re designated a fish. Check out 19 slang terms that make up felonious discourse behind bars. Devising new twists on language and communication is a necessity. Linguist Julie Coleman told PBS News Hour that prison is virtually ideal for new slang to flourish: People are stuck in one place and talking, often hoping to avoid detection by eavesdropping guards. Many euphemisms exist for a state or federal prison stay-and once inside, inmates have to adopt a whole new jargon to navigate incarcerated life. This is the British foreign secretary refering to just such a request or suggestion by the King of Sweden that he might be awarded a high British honour (Knight of the Garter).The big house. 65 Charles John flew a kite at us for the Garter the other day, but without success. If medical requests in your prison service used to be regularly turned down, then they might also have been associated with “kite-flying”?īy the way, I notice a citation in the OED entry has this:ġ831 Visct. I remember that, in the Royal Navy, “to fly a kite” also meant, by extension, “to make a request that you had little expectation of having accepted”. The OED suggests that it comes from the practice of putting up a kite to see which way the wind is blowing at altitude. This may come from a variation on the common English expression, “to fly a kite”, meaning “to make a suggestion in order to guage the response” before committing to a course of action. This entry was posted in Inmate issues, Jail culture, Language and tagged correctional medicine, inmates, jail medicine, jails, Kite, language, prisons, slang by Jeffrey Keller MD. ![]() But is it true?Ĭan anyone out there shed some light on this subject? Where did the term “kite” originate? This explanation of the term makes sense to me, so I tend to believe it. Since the folded up note attached to a piece of string resembled a kite, it was called a “kite,” and the term “kite” then became a universal prison term for any written communication, including requests for medical care. He then swings the note attached to the string underneath his cell door and into the cell of his friend. The inmate folds up a note and ties it to a long piece of string. “Kite” probably came instead from the prison practice of communicating with another inmate in the next cell or even many cells away. I need to see the doctor.” Deputy: “Oh, go fly a kite.” Although many inmates believe this, I myself don’t think this is where the term comes from. Some inmates believe that the term “kite” implies that we don’t care about them, as in: Inmate: “I’m sick. So where did the term “kite” come from? I have heard two explanations. Even the dictionaries devoted to slang, like The Online Slang Dictionary or the Slang Dictionary don’t list the term “kite.” How can a slang term be so common in jails and prisons yet be unknown to linguists? Yet I cannot find this definition of “kite” listed in any dictionary. ![]()
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