*kaə-id-, Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to strike."
It forms all or part of: abscise; avicide; biocide; caesarian; caesura; cement; chisel; -cide; circumcise; circumcision; concise; decide; decision; deicide; excise (v.); excision; felicide; feticide; filicide; floricide; fratricide; fungicide; gallinicide; genocide; germicide; herbicide; homicide; incise; incision; incisor; infanticide; insecticide; legicide; liberticide; libricide; matricide; parricide; patricide; pesticide; precise; precision; prolicide; scissors; senicide; spermicide; suicide; uxoricide; verbicide.
It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Sanskrit skhidati "beats, tears;" Latin caedere "to strike down, fell, slay;" Lithuanian kaišti "shave;" Armenian xait'em "to stab;" Albanian qeth "to shave;" Middle Dutch heien "to drive piles," Old High German heia "wooden hammer," German heien "beat."
"gossip over cups of coffee," 1877, from German Kaffeeklatsch, from kaffee "coffee" (see coffee) + klatsch "gossip" (see klatsch).
THE living-room in a German household always contains a large sofa at one side of the room, which is the seat of honor accorded a guest. At a Kaffeeklatsch (literally, coffee gossip) the guests of honor are seated on this sofa, and the large round table is wheeled up before them. The other guests seat themselves in chairs about the table. [Mary Alden Hopkins, "A 'Kaffeeklatsch,'" "Boston Cooking-School Magazine of Culinary Science and Domestic Economics," May 1905]
1790, "infidel," earlier and also caffre (1670s), from Arabic kafir "unbeliever, infidel, impious wretch," with a literal sense of "one who does not admit (the blessings of God)," from kafara "to cover up, conceal, deny, blot out."
Technically, "a non-Muslim," but in Ottoman times it came to be used there almost exclusively as the disparaging word for "Christian." It also was used by Muslims in East Africa of the pagan black Africans; English missionaries then picked it up as an equivalent of "heathen" to refer to Bantus in South Africa (1731), from which use in English it came generally to mean "South African black" regardless of ethnicity, and to be a term of abuse at least since 1934.
also keffieh, keffiyeh, small shawl or scarf worn with a cord around the head by some Arab men, 1817.
1947, resembling such situations as are explored in the fiction of Franz Kafka (1883-1924), German-speaking Jewish novelist born in Prague, Austria-Hungary. The surname is Czech German, literally "jackdaw," and is imitative.
variant of kerfuffle.
Mexican coffee-flavored liqueur, produced from 1936, the name said to be from the native Acolhua people, allies of the Aztecs.
1886, in a report in English by the Hawaiian government, which defines the word as "doctor and sorcerer," from Hawaiian, where it was applied as well to priests and navigators. In surfer slang, "a god of surfing," it is attested from 1962 (but big kahuna in same sense is said to date from 1950s).
fem. proper name, often a shortening of Katherine. As a given name for girls, from 1890s in the U.S.; among the top 100 names for girls born there 1936-1945.
1858 in reference to the emperors of Austria and (after 1870) Germany, from German Kaiser, Bavarian and Austrian spelling variant of of Middle High German keisar, from Old High German keisar "emperor," an early borrowing of Latin cognomen Caesar.
The Germanic peoples seem to have called all Roman emperors "caesar" (compare Old English casere, Old Norse keisari "an emperor"). The word also entered Germanic via Gothic, perhaps from Greek. According to Kluge, one of the earliest Latin loan word in Germanic. The Old English word fell from use after Middle English.
