Origin of Kibosh

Routledge Studies in Etymology

Gerald Cohen, Stephen Goranson, Matthew Little

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351809900
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This is an etymological study of the origins of the word kibosh, which has long been one of the great mysteries of the English language. Unconvincing derivations have been suggested from Yiddish to Gaelic and Italian, and thus far consensus among lexicographers has leaned toward referencing the word as 'origin unknown'.

In this study, the authors present convincing and important new evidence in favour of the derivation of kibosh from the word for a fearsome Middle Eastern whip, known as the kurbash.

This monograph is one of the most significant etymological works directed at a single phrase. It is the gold standard on deep-drill, focused and exhaustive single-word lexicography and will be of interest to lexicographers and linguists in the relevant fields.

1   Overview

The origin of kibosh in put the kibosh on has long been one of the great mysteries in the English language. Derivations have been proposed from Yiddish, Hebrew, Old High German, French, Turkish, Latin, Gaelic, and Italian; and discussions have associated the words with such diverse activities as bidding at auctions, making clogs, mounting animals’ heads as trophies, creating heraldic emblems, dismissing balderdash, pronouncing death-sentences, torturing rebels, selling ice-cream and auctioning vegetables.

None of these suggestions has proved convincing, and lexicographers agree in saying ‘Origin unknown’ or ‘Origin obscure.’ But the authors of the present book have revisited the issue in some detail, finding new evidence which, we believe, points to a derivation of kibosh from kurbash, the fearsome Middle Eastern whip.

The earliest previously noticed attestation of kibosh is from 1836—in Cockney speech—and the new antedatings of ca. 1830–1835, while only a few years older, are highly significant. They bring important evidence in favor of kibosh < kurbash and also confirm the early presence of kibosh in Cockney speech.

The most important antedating, spotted by Goranson, is the ca.1830 kibosh in the broadside Penal Servitude!, an apparently humorous poem supposedly written by a convict returning from Australia. The writer not only provides the earliest attestation thus far for kibosh, but is likely also responsible for the entrance of kibosh into British speech. If we assume (and this seems reasonable) that his poem had popularity in the lower strata of British society, we would have the explanation for how kibosh was acquired (or at the very least, popularized) there.

Dating the broadside

The broadside is undated, but some very important internal evidence indicates it was written prior to the 1834–1835 attestations of put the kibosh on, most likely prior to the 1832 Reform Bill:

1. John Ferguson, author of the seven-volume Bibliography of Australia, judged the date to be ‘ca. 1830,’ saying ‘The date is suggested by the following verse evidently referring to the Reform bill agitation:
   ‘“Here’s to be a deal of reformation,

   About reform you’ve often heard a fuss.

   And while you keep your paupers in starvation

   You’re sure to be surrounded by coves like us.”’
   Note the first of the four lines just above: ‘Here’s to be a deal of reformation.’ ‘Here’s to be…’ clearly implies the future; i.e., prior to passage of the 1832 Reform Bill.
2. The author found it necessary to define ‘kibosh,’ something that would not have been necessary if the broadside were written after put the kibosh on attained national recognition in 1834–1835.
   ‘There is one little dodge I am thinking,

   That would put your profession all to smash,

   It would put on the kibosh like winking,

   That is if they was to introduce the lash.’
3. The broadside does not say put the kibosh on but rather the slightly different put on the kibosh. But by 1835 there are no attestations at all of put on the kibosh. The appearance of this latter alternative in the broadside makes sense only if it appeared before put the kibosh on became fixed in popular speech.

Indications that kibosh originally referred to a whip

Dictionaries still say that kibosh (in put the kibosh on) is of unknown origin, but evidence compiled by Goranson and Little clearly indicates we deal with a lash:

1. A line in the poem (ca. 1830) Penal Servitude! specifically defines the noun kibosh as a lash. The key verse in the poem (supposedly written by a convict who has returned from imprisonment in Australia) appears above on this page; note the following clarification about ‘put on the kibosh’: ‘That is if they was to introduce the lash.’
2. A quote from 1835: ‘r[a]ise the kibosh against me’ True Sun (London newspaper), May 15, p. 4/4: (‘They say so [make accusations] to rise the kibosh against me and my wife.’)
3. In the same 1835 article: Man testifies he was struck and specifies the ‘kibosh’ as the instrument: (‘…and they gets other Jews to give me the kibosh upon me, and it’s all the same to me which of the whole set struck me.’)
4. In 1892 French-Sheldon defines kibosh as ‘a rhinoceros-hide stick’ (i.e. a kurbash; kurbashes were made of rhinoceros or hippopotamus hide.)
5. The World War I song (‘When This Bloody War Is Over’; in Max Arthur 2001: 13): ‘For Belgium put the kibosh on the Kaiser /Europe took the stick and made him sore /…’
6. Abhorrent, racist rant (Punch, March 15, 1879, p. 113), which includes the line ‘He’s off with the 17th Lancers to kibosh the festive Zulu.’—The reference of this ‘kibosh’ to whipping is made distressingly clear by the accompanying couplets.
7. In a vein similar to #5 above, Ratcliffe 1901 wrote:
   ‘…It [kybosh] was also used in the sense of giving a hiding. “I’ll give him what for! I’ll give him kybosh!”’

So kibosh was evidently introduced to British speech by the poem Penal Servitude!, but it was not yet widely known. Unless something happened to change this situation, kibosh would remain restricted to the lower echelons of British society or fade into oblivion, as so many other slang items did. But something did happen. An unlikely, unheralded, and unwitting lexical hero emerged: a Cockney chimney sweep, hauled into court in 1834 with his companion for violating the 1834 Chimney Sweepers Act, had an outburst of frustration and anger after the trial. That outburst—delivered in an unmistakable Cockney dialect—contained a blast against ‘the Vigs’ (Whigs) and the sweep used the new expression put the kibosh on. The London Standard article reporting on the trial was widely reprinted in England, and now people all over country were reading about putting the kibosh on the ‘Vigs.’ In particular, people engaged in political discourse picked up the expression. Put the kibosh on was of humble origin, but the people doing the kiboshing were politically significant: the Duke of Wellington, MP William Ingilby, and no less a personage than the British King. Put the kibosh on was now taking root in British speech. But let’s backtrack to the two chimney sweeps. They received a lenient fine, but one of them then had his lexically historic outburst:

‘…it vos the “Vigs” vot passed this bill, and vot the Duke of Vellington put the kibosh on ‘em for, and sarve ‘em right. It warnt nothing else than this here hact vot “floored” them.’

The Whigs (reform party) passed the bill, which put a crimp in the activities of the chimney sweep (it was against the law to cry his services), and he was delighted when the Whigs lost the election. The Duke of Wellington, who was briefly Prime Minister in 1834, was considered by the chimney sweep to be the prime agent of the Whigs’ defeat.

The London Standard’s article was reprinted in at least eight other newspapers throughout England. This was a human-interest story, with the angry, anti-Whig, bluest of the blue-collar-type Cockney making for good copy. Of the next two attestations of kibosh, one was specifically connected with the Whigs (January 18, 1835) and one likely so (December 7, 1834; all men mentioned were reformists, but at least several of the names were humorously made up—Pipkins, Snooks, etc.).

The chronology:

November 27, 1834—London Standard story about the two chimney sweeps.

December 7, 1834 – The Age (London) article: Two reformist-minded MPs wanted the king to appoint ministers who they nominated, and for this were said to have received a ‘“kyboshing” from insulted Majesty.’

January 18, 1835—The Age [London] article: (radical reformer) MP William Ingilby used the term ‘kibosh’; and another MP (James Graham) ‘puts…the “kibosh” on Whig lies’ [in regard to a certain matter of concern to the journalist; Graham, himself, a (conservative) Whig, was not the one who spoke about ‘Whig lies.’]

A supporting factor likely was also at work in helping kibosh spread beyond the lower strata of British society. Goranson has drawn attention to one aspect of the reform movement in Britain, viz the attempt to abolish the horrendous practice of flogging in the British military where a thousand lashes was a standard punishment. The military resisted the reform, arguing that flogging was essential for military discipline, so when kibosh emerged on the scene, there was already considerable public attention to the topic of whipping. But while the flogging issue probably helped spread kibosh in British speech, it is difficult to judge just how significant its role was. Besides kibosh from kurbash, two other theories on kibosh have emerged in the past several years, each vigorously defended by its respective champion, but neither seems preferable to kibosh < kurbash: (1) kibosh (in put the kibosh on) originally as the clogmaker’s tool kibosh/kybosh, and (2) kibosh < the English verb caboche ‘to cut off a stag’s head behind the ears (with no part of the neck in view) as a trophy’ – ultimately from French caboche, slang for ‘head’. Serious objections exist to both of these theories. A third theory facing difficulty sees kibosh in put the kibosh on as deriving from Irish Gaelic CAIDHP BHÁIS (‘cap of death’; sounds roughly like ‘kybosh’). According to one variant, it refers to the black cap worn when the (English) judge pronounced a death sentence. But this cap was worn by the judge, not the prisoner. A second variant sees the ‘cap of death’ referring to the pitch cap – a torture device used by the British during the Irish Rebellion of 1798. But other than referring to a mushroom, CAIDHP BHÁIS is unattested prior to the earliest certain attestations of kibosh in put the kibosh on, viz 1834.

2 Introduction

‘Origin unknown’; previous works; chronology

The term kibosh has long been of unknown origin (e.g. Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition: ‘Origin obscure’).¹ Prior to 2010 most attempts at a solution consisted of brief, highly speculative notes, particularly in Notes & Queries (e.g., Anonymous 1875, Davis 1901, MacMichael 1901, Platt 1901, Loewe 1924), which, incidentally, also dealt with the lesser used meanings of the term. The derivation from Yiddish and/or Hebrew once had some popularity, and occasionally one finds an attempt to derive kibosh from the Irish words meaning ‘cap of death’ (see Dolan 1998, Green 2005, Share [1997: 157]). But the ‘cap of death’ derivation has the notable drawback that the judges put the cap on themselves, not the person to be executed. And the proposed Yiddish/Hebrew derivations of kibosh, already controversial, were refuted in detail by David Gold’s 2011 article. Gold 2011 represents a milestone in this regard. As an expert in Yiddish and Hebrew, he speaks with authority on these matters. But things change when he leaves his area of undisputed authority and ventures into p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Preface
• 1 Overview
• 2 Introduction: ‘origin unknown’; previous works; chronology
• 3 Penal Servitude!, continued
• 4 Spread of put the kibosh on from Cockney speech into standard slang
• 5 Kibosh in several newspaper accounts
• 6 Additional attestations of kibosh Cornelis Stoffel 1894
• 7 Three competing etymologies are unconvincing
• 8 Personal observations
• Appendix 1: Anatoly Liberman’s 2013 article ‘Three recent theories of kibosh, continued’
• Appendix 2: Kibosh-from-kurbash etymology, evidently first proposed by Matthew Little (November 2009)
• Appendix 3: Several newspaper items about chimney sweeps
• Appendix 4: Political complexities in Britain of the early 1830s
• Appendix 5: Notes & queries items on a Yiddish origin of kibosh/kybosh
• Annotated bibliography
• Index