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Kit

The kit is a stringed musical instrument. It is essentially a very small violin, designed to fit in a pocket, hence its other common name, the pochette fiddle. It was used by dance masters in Royal courts and other places of nobility up until around the 18th century. Occasionally, the rebec was used in the same way.

The body of the instrument is very small, but it has a relatively long fingerboard in order to accommodate the player's hand.


Kit is also a nickname for Christopher.


A kit can also refer to a set of tools.


A kit is also a young fox or raccoon.


A kit can also refer to the uniform of a soccer player.


An alternative musical use of the word kit is as an abbreviation for drum kit.


On Usenet, a kit is possibly from DEC Slang for a full software distribution, as opposed to a patch or upgrade. A source software distribution that has been packaged in such a way that it can (theoretically) be unpacked and installed according to a series of steps using only standard Unix tools, and entirely documented by some reasonable chain of references from the top-level README file . The more general term distribution may imply that special tools or more stringent conditions on the host environment are required.

This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.

Last updated: 02-10-2005 07:33:55
Last updated: 05-03-2005 17:50:55