Go Fly a Kite

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Celeste calling from Washington, D.C.

Well, hello, Celeste. What do you do in D.C.?

I am a legal assistant.

So are you calling for grammatical assistance?

I am calling because I’m curious to know the origins of the phrase go fly a kite.

Aha. Go fly a kite meaning buzz off?

Yes.

Now, what got you curious about that?

Well, someone had mentioned it to me a while ago, and I was really confused as to what they meant.

I was bothering them, and obviously I stopped bothering them because I just didn’t know what they were trying to tell me to do.

Okay, so you were a little kid and you were told to go fly a kite?

Yes, I was.

So you thought they were literally telling you to go fly a kite?

I did, I did.

Oh, bless your heart.

Well, it’s an expression that’s been around for what, Grant, since at least the early…

The 1920s, as far as I know.

-huh, -huh.

Really?

And so it’s part and parcel of that whole family of expressions like that.

Go jump in a lake, go fry an egg, go cook a radish.

All of those expressions were common during that period of time.

And it’s certainly a lot more polite than what you might say.

Go fry an egg or go fly a kite.

Yeah, and I mean, I think it’s just one of many phrases like that.

I mean, you see it in other languages, too.

In Spanish, you’ll be told to go fry an asparagus or go fry potatoes.

So the kite, though, Martha, you’ve heard the theories about why people say fly a kite or fly a kite, right?

People are directly going back to this myth that Ben Franklin discovered lightning or that he discovered electricity, and he didn’t do either.

But people do know the story of Ben Franklin flying his kite in the lightning storms, right?

Right.

So the idea is that if you go fly a kite, they’re hoping that you’ll get struck by lightning.

So it’s a way of saying go injure yourself.

Sort of like go jump in a lake.

Yeah.

Go play in traffic.

Go play in traffic.

Exactly.

So there’s no way to prove that, but it makes the most sense.

And the reason it makes the most sense is because the first use that I know of is from a comic strip where the guy in the comic strip is flying a kite in a lightning storm.

There’s a bolt of lightning in the air about to strike his kite.

But he’s not looking where he’s going.

So he’s not only going to get struck by lightning, but he’s going to run headfirst into the rear end of a donkey.

So he’s going to get it either way.

Well, Celeste, aren’t you glad you didn’t go do that?

I am very glad.

I’m a little concerned that that’s what she was telling me to do.

Well, you know what?

Maybe you need a lawyer of your own.

That sounds like an unemployment dispute to me.

Okay, thank you so much.

You’re welcome, Celeste.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

So do you have a copy of that comic strip that we could post to the website?

I would post it online.

Yes!

I would love to see it.

Super duper.

If you’ve got a question about grammar, punctuation, spelling, or the best way to put something into print,

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

And you can always send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

We read everything.