etymologyword-usage
When I read period authors, i.e., Dickens, or Verne, or Hugo, etc., I always see things like:
My dear child/Child, come here/He is but a child!
But I don't see kid. In fact, I didn't see kid even in the contemporary work A Series of Unfortunate Events when I was reading it (unless I missed it). Children was still used there. So, my question is:
When did "kid" become used to mean "child"?
Is it less formal to use "kid" than "child"?
The most well known is arguably Google-fu which is first in Usenet on 27th September 2002 in a comp.sys.mac.advocacy post by James Boswell:
Have you ANY idea how much a Wildcat 6210 costs? ( http://www.3dlabs.com/product/wildcatIII_6210_index.htm )
* google fu *
http://www.amazoninternational.com/html/hardware/pricing/graphics/pro...s_cards.asp
£1900 + VAT (that's 17.5% here)
Followed soon later on 29th October 2002 in rec.music.christian:
hope that helps. and practice your google fu, young one. ;)
And on 19th December 2002 in alt.arts.poetry.comments:
I had gavagai told to me in an intro philosophy or an intro linguistics class. wtf? is my google fu so much better than yours, grasshopper?
There's approximately 32 results in 2003, ~121 in 2004, ~279 in 2005, ~318 in 2006 and ~410 in 2007.
13th July 2000 in rec.arts.anime.misc:
Luckily, I'm one of those UNIX/Web developer/code fu types that one of the other posters referred to, so the money isn't really an issue for me.
2000: ~4 results, 2001: ~3 results, 2002: ~4 results, 2003: ~4 results, 2004: ~12 results, 2005: ~32 results, 2006: ~46 results, 2007: ~94 results.
29th May 1998 in aus.computers.sun:
Plus I like BSD-style unixes at home and sys v-style at work. Keeps me on my toes. good UNIX fu. {insert appropriate sound effects here}
18th November 1998 in alt.motd (from Soda.csua.berkeley.edu motd):
_ your Java fu is weak, grasshopper. Use a JIT.
"Your [X]-fu is weak, grasshopper" is a common pattern and may be the source.
This seems to be inspired by the 1972–1975 television series Kung Fu. The protagonist Kwai Chang Caine often had flashbacks to his childhood lessons, when his kung fu master called him Grasshopper. This is the source of other similar phrases such as "patience, grasshopper", and from the pilot):
Master Po: Close your eyes. What do you hear?
Young Caine: I hear the water, I hear the birds.
Po: Do you hear your own heartbeat?
Caine: No.
Po: Do you hear the grasshopper which is at your feet?
Caine: Old man, how is it that you hear these things?
Po: Young man, how is it that you do not?
Listen to a .wav file.
The OED dates boink as a verb back to 1984, citing Stephen King's Thinner, where it appears to be used as onomatopoeia, similar to bonk:
He half-expected them to begin bopping and boinking each other.
For this sense, the OED gives the definition "to strike, to knock", which is fairly similar to how bonk is used. As for the sexual meaning, their earliest cite is from two years later, a 1986 posting to the newsgroup net.singles by Andrew Tannenbaum:
When you and your honey boink away, you're doing what the doggies do.
Can boink be antedated? Perhaps. But take a look at the following chart from Google Books Ngrams Viewer:
So at the very least, boink wasn't widespread until after the mid-80s.
Searching Google Books, I was able to find some examples of boink from before 1986, but none with a sexual meaning. I chose to search for boinking first to reduce false positives because Google Books (unlike their Ngram Viewer) is case-insensitive and Boink is a name. I did also search for boink, but it was less useful. Searches for boinked and boinks had fewer false positives than boink did, but neither turned up any pre-1986 citations with a sexual meaning.
Most of what I found was like the following snippet from The Complaint Booth (Jack Kurtz, 1978):
Fairies pass through audience boinking people with their wands. Elves up and down aisles "beeping."
Here it seems similar to bonk. And we can find scattered earlier uses with the same meaning, as in the following 1966 use with a similar meaning in Science & Technology:
This causes a mechanical wave to travel around the circumference of the sleeve―in the same way it would if you kept "boinking" the top of a metal can with your fingers.
Using the same tools, Frank found an even earlier example, apparently quoting something Senator John Thye said in a 1947 congressional committee meeting:
Mr. Sears, how would you propose to perfect the general farm program, disregarding soil conservation which is just one small phase of the enter program, but boink back to parity price, the ever-normal granary, and those programs?
There are more like this, but it didn't seem to be especially common and none of the pre-1986 examples I found had a sexual meaning. Of course, that doesn't mean people didn't use it that way, only that I can't find it in print using online tools. It seems likely that the word was used in speech before it appeared in print, but I can only speculate as to how much earlier.
Given the dates, including the citation Frank found, it seems reasonable to guess that boink goes back about as far as bonk. As for the sexual use, it seems safe to say it became commonplace after the mid-80s.
Best Answer
Kid as young goat is from the 1200s with
Dictionary.com defines kid as (informal) child.
You would use it in direct conversation with persons you know well
although I don't see it as too informal to ask someone, "Any kids?" instead of, "Any children?"