- a toy made of a light frame covered with paper, cloth, etc., that you fly in the air at the end of one or more long strings
- to fly a kite
- the joys of kite flying
Oxford Collocations Dictionaryverb + kite- fly
- flying
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- a bird of prey (= a bird that kills other creatures for food) of the hawk familyTopics Birdsc2
Word OriginOld English cȳta (as a noun in sense (2)); probably of imitative origin and related to German Kauz ‘screech owl’. The toy was so named because it hovers in the air like the bird.
Idioms
See kite in the Oxford Advanced American Dictionaryfly a kite
- (informal) to test out public opinion on a subject
- The company is flying a kite to see if this plan provokes any interest.
go fly a/your kite
- (North American English, informal) used to tell somebody to go away and stop annoying you or interfering
high as a kite
- (informal) behaving in a very excited way, especially because of being strongly affected by alcohol or drugs
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kite