also kail, "cabbage, any kind of greens with curled or wrinkled leaves," c. 1300, a variant of cawul (see cole (n.1)), surviving in Scottish and northern English. Slang meaning "money" is from 1902, from the notion of leaves of green.
variety of cabbage in which the young inflorescence forms a fleshy white head, 1590s, originally cole florye, from Italian cavoli fiori "flowered cabbage," plural of cavolo "cabbage" + fiore "flower" (from Latin flora, from PIE root *bhel- (3) "to thrive, bloom").
First element is from Latin caulis "cabbage" (originally "stem, stalk;" see cole (n.1) ) which was borrowed into Germanic and is the source of the cole in cole-slaw and of Scottish kale. The front end of the word was re-Latinized from 18c.; the back end was influenced by flower (n.). The boxer's cauliflower ear, swollen and deformed by blunt trauma, is from 1907.
"varying or variegated like the forms and colors in a kaleidoscope," 1820, from kaleidoscope + -ic. Figurative use by 1855.
"optical instrument creating and exhibiting, by reflection, a variety of beautiful colors and symmetrical forms," 1817, literally "observer of beautiful forms," coined by its inventor, Scottish scientist David Brewster (1781-1868), from Greek kalos "beautiful, beauteous" (see Callisto) + eidos "shape" (see -oid) + -scope, on model of telescope, etc. They sold by the thousands in the few years after their invention, but Brewster failed to secure a patent.
Figurative meaning "constantly changing pattern" is first attested 1819 in Lord Byron, whose publisher had sent him one of the toys. As a verb, from 1891. A kaleidophone (1827) was invented by English inventor Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875) to make sound waves visible.
