K
ka, for quo’ (quoth, quotha); ‘Enamoured ka? mary sir say that againe’, Udall, Roister Doister, i. 2 (Merygreek); Peele, Old Wives Tale (ed. Dyce, 455); Penry, Mar-Prelate’s Epitome, 21 (EDD.). In prov. use in Durham, Cumberland, Suffolk (EDD.). Also, ko, ‘I feare him not, Ko she’, Roister Doister, iii. 3.
kaa me, kaa thee, i.e. do me a good turn, and I will do thee the same. Eastward Ho, ii. 1 (or 3) (Quicksilver); Massinger, City Madam, ii. 1 (Goldwire). So in Scotland they say ‘Kae me and I’ll kae thee’, in Northumberland ‘Kaa me, kaa thee’, or, ‘Kaa mee an aa’ll kaa thee’; ‘Ka me and I’ll ka thee, Serva me, servabo te’, Coles, Dict. (1679). See Nares. Cp. the phr. ‘Claw me, claw thee’ used in the same sense.
kad, to caw. Chapman, All Fools, iii. 1 (Valerio).
kails, keils, nine-pins; ‘A game called nine-pins, or keils’, B. Jonson, Chloridia (Antimasque). Du. kegel, a pin, kail.
kam, crooked, awry. Coriolanus, iii. 1. 304. Welsh cam, crooked; Irish cam (Dinneen). See [kim-kam].
karl hemp, the male hemp. Tusser, Husbandry, § 15. 24; also called churl hemp, Fitzherbert, Husb., § 146. 28. See [carl].
karne, a ‘kern’, a foot-soldier. Stanyhurst, tr. of Virgil, Aeneid ii, 8. Irish ceatharnach, a foot-soldier, deriv. of ceatharn, a band of fighting men (Dinneen). See [keteryng].
katexoken, for kat’exochēn, super-eminently. Massinger, Guardian, iii. 1. 7. Gk. κατ’ ἐξοχήν, by way of eminence.
keak, keke, to cackle as a goose; ‘The silver Gander keaking cried’, Phaer, Aeneid viii, 655; ‘Theves . . . had stolne Jupiter, had a gouse not a kekede’, Ascham, Toxoph. (ed. Arber, 130). Cp. Kek, kek!, the cry of the goose and duck, in Chaucer, Parl. Foules, 499.