A few years ago I did a post on the slang word kibosh, and Stephen Goranson added the following comment last October:
Published this month:
Origin of Kibosh: Routledge Studies in Etymology
by Gerald Cohen, Stephen Goranson, and Matthew Little.
Now he has been kind enough to have a copy sent to me, and it’s a wonderful little book
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.
Here is the crucial quatrain from the broadside:
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.
The next step in the development is described on p. 3:
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.
There are plenty of illustrations, including one of the broadside itself (of which only a single copy survives). And the primary author of the book is Gerald Cohen, whose journal Comments on Etymology I wrote about here (it’s only on paper, not available on the Internet); you could hardly ask for a more authoritative scholar. The book is pricey (it almost goes without saying), but see if your library has it; it’s well worth perusing if you have any interest in the word.
If the meaning intended in “Penal Servitude!” was a type of whip, then that quatrain seems rather poorly structured; it gives away the punch line in line three, unless it was assumed by the author that the meaning of “kibosh” would be unknown to the reader. However, it is easy to see how the crucial line could be reinterpreted to give “kibosh” its modern meaning, since the verse actually reads better that way.
“that quatrain seems rather poorly structured” — broadside ballads are rarely literary jewels
Wheee! $137.85? That puts the kibosh on me buying it.
Thanks. An enlargeable color photo of the broadside “Penal Servitude!” is provided by the National Library of Australia:
https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/502489
I had come across kurbash several years ago, and mentally pronounced it with /u/, without checking, so it would never have occurred to me to link the two.
Aidan: Thanks for the link. The conditions of the slave trade in the Sudan seem to have been even worse than those of the Atlantic one.
I find the English translation of the relevant German sentence puzzling, probably incorrect. This is about the fate of the exhausted slave on the route through the desert:
Wenn er zusammensackte und ihn nicht einmal mehr die ‚Karbach‘, die aus Nilpferdleder gefertigte Peitsche, zum Aufstehen bewegen konnte, wurde er einfach zurückgelassen
= If he collapsed, not feeling the scourge of the ‘kurbash,’ the hippopotamus-leather whip, he was simply left there [to become one of the many camel and human skeletons that showed the route of the caravans]
Should not this be : If he collapsed, and the ‘kurbash’ …. could no longer move him to stand up, he was simply left behind
Yes, I’m pretty sure you’re right. Sloppy translation.
I went back to the earlier post on kibosh, for which I had some comments which I had forgotten
After rereading the whole of that earlier post, I don”t think that the origin of kibosh has anything to do with the hippopotamus leather whip (Goranson et al.’s work was dismissed by one of the commenters there) referred to as kurbash or (in the German text) karbach. But the author of “Penal Servitude” could have confused the rare words kurbash and kibosh, since neither one was commonly known in English at the time.
Since kibosh is used after the verb ‘put on”, the meaning ‘whip’ does not seem to be right.
Yes, except that nicht einmal means “not even”.
Thanks David for the correction. It’s a long time since I studied any German. I was surprised I could still figure out most of the syntax.
🙂
The 2014 post on kibosh (linked above) does include a dismissive comment (“…indefensible, as I will explain….”), and I still await that proposed explanation. The book does include extensive discussion of then-available alternate proposals, as well as comment on “put on the kibosh” and “put the kibosh on.” It includes several texts in which the kibosh is a lash. For example, a traveler from London to East Africa wrote in 1892, “Witnessing the event, Hamidi’s kibosh (rhinoceros-hide stick) went whistling through the air….” And, marie-lucie, if you know of any use of kibosh earlier than 1830, please do share.
Yes, while I think everyone’s first reaction to the kibosh = whip idea is that it feels implausible, the evidence presented in the book is quite compelling.
Well, I think that people here know that I am willing to be “compelled” when I see compelling evidence, but I am not a specialist in English language history and will trust LH’s judgment since he has read the book and I have not.
The strangeness is not just that kibosh or a very similar word means ‘whip, lash’, but specifically ‘whip made of rhinoceros or hippopotamus hide, used by slave traders in East Africa to control their victims’ (something that writers about the area feel needs explaining when they first use the word). But I could imagine this being used as metaphor. I won’t try to say any more!
A whip made from hippopotamus hide used to threaten or punish generic underlings was a trope in German literature set in the Middle East in the 19th century. It just didn’t have a name.
I remember sjambok from reading Louis Boussenard’s novels set in South Africa.
You mention “David L. Gold’s [suggestion that kibosh derives from “the clogmakers’ term kibosh ‘iron bar about a foot long.” He abandoned that suggestion some time ago.
In a talk earlier this year, he demonstrated that of the nine pieces of evidence that Cohen, Goranson, and Little adduce in support of their belief that the word originally meant ”whip’, “three do not support [it] and three are so vaguely worded that they speak neither for nor against it” (quoted from the handout).
Comments on Etymology May 2019: “KIBOSH UPDATE #4 (COMPILATION)” is on the internet.
It includes Gold’s 2016 retraction of his 2011 clogmaker suggestion, but nothing about his work since then.
The Oxford English Dictionary (online) article kibosh n. has been revised. It reads, in part:
I don’t know if it was proposed before, but how about
Kiebitz m (genitive Kiebitzes, plural Kiebitze)
kibitz, kibitzer: person who watches a card or chess game, often disturbing those playing
kibitzer (plural kibitzers)
A person who offers unsolicited views, advice, or criticism; one who kibitzes.
Did I ask you what you thought about my cards, you kibitzer?
German word Kiebitz with similar meaning:
Bedeutungen:
[1] umgangssprachlich: Zuschauer beim Kartenspiel, störender Zuschauer und Ratgeber beim Schachspiel
Herkunft:
Entlehnung aus dem Rotwelschen, in dem es seit dem 19. Jahrhundert in den folgenden Formen bezeugt ist: Kiewisch, Chippesch, Gippesch, Kippisch im Sinne von „Durchsuchung, Leibesvisitation, Untersuchung“; einige Quellen vermuten die Wurzel der rotwelschen Formen im Jiddischen; die genaue Herkunft bleibt jedoch unklar[1][2]
Borrowed into Russian slang as кипиш (scandal, screaming, noise, bustle, commotion)
Reconstructed original meaning “put an end, stop, halt something (for example a card game) by interfering”.
The Oxford English Dictionary (online) article kibosh n. has been revised.
Thanks for that; a nice summary.
Kiebitz.
/ˈkɪvɐrɐ/.
I have not read David L. Gold’s criticism of our book, Origin of Kibosh.
I agree with him that kibosh did not derive from Yiddish or Hebrew.
On his website, http://davidlgold.com/index.html, Gold wrote:
“Note: I no longer believe that kibosh ‘iron bar…’ is the source of kibosh as in put the kibosh on […], but that sense (‘iron bar…’) and another sense of kibosh, namely ‘Portland cement’, are etymologically important because, as a sememic analysis shows, they point in the direction of the immediate etymon of the word. I still hold to the section of the article dealing with the alleged Jewish origin of the word.”
It is not clear to me what etymology proposal Gold is getting at.
@dm
Re Kiebitz, the (or one) English name is peewit. Are both of these onomatopoeia?
It seems to go beyond these two.
bíbic
Hungarian
An onomatopoeia
bíbic (plural bíbicek)
northern lapwing (Vanellus vanellus)
lapwing (bird belonging to the subfamily Vanellinae)
Also a song in Russian:
У дороги чибис, у дороги чибис,
Он кричит, волнуется, чудак:
“Ах, скажите, чьи вы, ах, скажите, чьи вы
И зачем, зачем идёте вы сюда?”
http://www.sovmusic.ru/text.php?fname=chibis
As sung by the Blue Guitars (a ’70s pop/rock band).
Stephen Goranson’s post of 31 December 2019 quotes a note posted on http://davidlgold.com/index.html
It has now been revised as follows:
Gold 2011 should be read with the following in mind:
I no longer believe that kibosh ‘iron bar…’ is the source of kibosh as in put the kibosh on […], but that sense (‘iron bar…’) and another sense of kibosh, namely ‘Portland cement’, are etymologically important because, as a sememic analysis of all the attested meanings of the word shows, they point in the direction of a possibly immediate etymon of the word. The pandemic has delayed publication of the sememic analysis.
That kibosh could be of immediate Yidish origin or immediate Hebrew origin is impossible. However, if it turns out that the use of kibosh received “reinforcement from Western Ashkenazic British English khay bash ‘eighteen pence'” (see the subtitle of Gold 2011), Yidish figures marginally in the history of the word.
Gold 2011 is still useful in that it clears away a heap of misinformation about Hebrew and Yidish that has accumulated in connection with kibosh for more than 120 years and it reduces the role that khay bash m a y have played in the history of the word to what is realistically possible.
Of the six pieces of evidence adduced by Gerald Cohen, Stephen Goranson, and Mathew Little for kibosh ‘lash, whip’ in the literal, concrete sense of those definientia, three are easily shown to be for the word in senses other than that one and three speak neither for nor against that sense. Consequently, we have no clear and convincing evidence for kibosh *‘lash, whip’.
No evidence supports their suggestion that the word comes from Arabic and evidence strongly suggests that it does not.
The pandemic has delayed publication of an analysis of Origin of kibosh. That analysis is separate from the sememic analysis of the word kibosh.
The Origin of Kibosh book and two other etymology books were reviewed by Michael Adams in Dictionaries: J. of the Dictionary Society of North America 41.2 (2020) 289-98. As a book co-author, in apology for shamelessness, I say that the publisher set a too-high hardback price–my profit being less that one volume cost–in effect a self-fulfilling prophecy that the book would go primarily to a few large libraries.
Excerpts, if allowed. (If anyone without access wishes a copy of the review, try my last name and duke; while supplies last; void where prohibited; limited time offer….)
(p. 292) ‘The book cogently argues that kibosh is a Cockney accommodation of Middle Eastern kurbash “whip”…
(p. 292) ‘…the authors do have a formidable case to make for the kurbash “whip”
etymology…’
(p. 294) ‘…To the extent that it presents all the relevant evidence, unvarnished,
thus inviting serious scholars to participate in the etymological thinking that accompanies
the evidence, Origin of Kibosh sets a great example and makes its case. It’s a small work
of meticulous scholarship that will appeal to specialists in English (for its narrative) and
etymologists (for its method).’
[ posting here, and on the other thread with “kibosh” ]
I already linked to Gerald Cohen’s online book about the word ‘dude’, but many (all?) of his other monographs, including those on the word ‘kibosh’, are also available.
https://works.bepress.com/gerald-cohen/
EDIT: Looks like you must be a student to get the original book “Origin of the word kibosh”
Timer ran out … that should read “The Origin of Kibosh”.
And I further see that it was published by Routledge, not MS&T, which is presumably why MS&T doesn’t offer it directly.
https://works.bepress.com/gerald-cohen/6/
Oh, well.
Gold, David L. 2022-2023. “So far, no solid evidence for *English kibosh < Arabic krb’ǧ.” Leuvense Bijdragen – Leuven Contributions in Linguistics and Philology. Vol. 104. Pp. 188-257.
Abstract
The origin and the original meaning of the English noun kibosh (variously spelled and now occurring always or almost always in the semantically bleached idiom put the kibosh on [+ noun phrase ~ pronoun] ‘put a definitive end to’, as in “The pandemic put the kibosh on their plans for a cruise around the world,” or ‘thwart’, as in “In the end, the Allies put the kibosh on Hitler”) have intrigued people since at least the 1870s and a number of etymologies have been suggested, but none has ever been demonstrated to be indisputably right.
In their book Origin of Kibosh, published in 2017, Gerald Cohen, Stephen Goranson, and Matthew Little claimed to have proven that (1) kibosh is an immediate reflex of the regional Arabic noun كرباج (krb’ǧ) ‘certain kind of whip’ and (2) that was the original meaning of the English word.
Since their book (of 172 pages) was far longer than all the previously published remarks on the word combined, it gained widespread attention in Anglophonia and the compilers of at least two dictionaries cautiously adopted the authors’ etymology as a possibility (each dictionary, in a form somewhat different from the other’s and from the authors’).
Believing that quantity is a sure measure of quality and therefore of accuracy, certain “reviewers” were impressed by the length of the book but either did not read it closely or were incapable of analyzing it and therefore did not realize its authors’ serious misinterpretations, their glaring omissions, their repeated lack of interest in delving, their readiness to permit themselves an overflow of unproven suppositions, which they thought constituted a well-argued etymology, and their other mistakes, big and small, of omission and commission.
The present analysis, by no means exhaustive, is the first treatment of the book in depth and in breadth. It takes a magnifying glass to the authors’ six exhibits for the English noun kibosh *‘certain kind of whip’ or *‘whip’ and verb kibosh *‘flog, whip’ and shows that two do not contain kibosh in those senses (exhibits D and F); one likely contains the Swahili noun kiboko ‘sjambok’ partly misrecorded or partly misprinted as kibosh presumably as a result of paronymic attraction (Exhibit E); one, being vaguely phrased, contains the word in a sense that now and maybe forever cannot be specified (Exhibit B); in another, the word has a remote chance of meaning *‘certain kind of whip’ or *‘whip’ (Exhibit C); and in a third, the word has a chance of so meaning (Exhibit A).
Thus, despite intensive searching on the World-Wide Web, the authors put into evidence not a single irrefutable attestation of the noun kibosh designating any kind of whip or meaning *‘whip’ in general (as in, say, *“The boatswain’s mate took a kibosh and flogged the cadet until he had welts all over his back”) or of the verb kibosh meaning *‘flog, whip’ (as in, say, *“The boatswain’s mate kiboshed the cadet until he had welts all over his back”) and of the three exhibits which might support their suggested etymology (A, B, and C), they never proved that any in fact did.
Although the authors claimed that the Arabic word entered English through the spoken channel, they categorically refused to try to determine whether their etymology was phonologically plausible, and although they suggested a few chains of transmission to explain how that word got from [Lower Egyptian?] Arabic to basilectal London English, where English kibosh was present by 25 November 1834, they offered not even weak evidence, let alone irrefutable proof, for any of the links in the chains.
The foregoing notwithstanding, the authors’ supposition of the original meaning of kibosh and of its immediate origin could be right, but if it is, they did not prove it.
Table of contents
1. The authors’ goals and their six alleged attestations for the English noun kibosh *‘certain kind of whip’ or * ‘whip’ and the English verb kibosh *‘flog, whip’
2. Exhibit A. The authors did not prove co-reference or disprove an opposition of inclusion
3. Exhibit B. What is the evidence that Mrs. and Mr. Myers were attacked with whips?
4. Exhibit C. What is the evidence that the schoolboys whipped one another?
5. Exhibit D. In the Anglo-Zulu War, the weapons of personal assault of the 17th Lancers were not whips but lances, swords, and Martini-Henrys or Snider-Enfields
6. Exhibit E. Italics, mention of a stick, a “smattering of the Swahili,” and the likelihood of paronymic attraction suggest not English kibosh *‘certain kind of whip’ or *‘whip’ but Swahili kiboko ‘sjambok’ partly misrecorded or partly misprinted as kibosh
7. Exhibit F. “Belgium put the kibosh on the Kaiser” means ‘The Belgian army [without using whips] thwarted the Schlieffen-Moltke Plan by slowing down the German advance through Belgium toward France’
8. Summary of sections 2-7: none of the six exhibits irrefutably attested the noun kibosh in the sense of *‘certain kind of whip’ or *‘whip’ or the verb kibosh in the sense of *‘flog, whip’; exhibits A, B, and C, however, remain subjects of interest
9. The authors’ etymology did not pass any of the three obligatory tests
9.1. The two-part semantic test: not passed
9.2. The phonological test: the authors categorically refused to perform it
9.3. The situational test: not passed
10. What happens if we follow the authors down the garden path by lowering the semantic bar to the nadir; or, Cicero’s javelinist and what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander
11. Freewheeling speculation and unevidenced assertions are not proofs; or, the authors’ allegedly “very important process” of “dealing with objections and looking at counter-suggestions”
12. You be the judge: circular reasoning? confirmation bias? the appeal to false authority? the ipse dixit? the non sequitur? the Aristotelian enthymeme? the argumentum ad hominem? the excluded middle? the proximity of kibosh to a mention of violence proves our etymology? all of the above?
13. The continuum between etiological and etymological research; or, nemo ivdex in cavsa sva
14. Rich in unproven suppositions and devoid of proven facts about the origin and the original meaning of kibosh
15. A possibly likelier (partial) etymology
16. References
Key words and concepts
British English kibosh, the butterfly effect, context and cotext, current standards in etymological research, the etiology-etymology continuum, false cognates and false etymons, hypotaxis versus parataxis, internal reconstruction and the comparative method, optionally anarthrous English count nouns, paronymic attraction, phonological stemmas, polysemy versus homonymy, regional Arabic كرباج (krb’ǧ), semantic bleaching, semantic stemmas, sporadic sound change
I may have a reply to the publication by David L. Gold,
once I am able to read the thing that he did not share with me.
William Blake wrote “opposition is true friendship.”
That’s a charitable option to regard David L. Gold’s article* on the Origin of Kibosh book as an expression of warmth.
And length, though John Strugnell’s Revue de Qumran response to John Allegro’s edition of some Cave 4 Qumran texts is actually longer than the reviewed book.
I may get into details, but still think kibosh as originally a whip or lash is better than his alternate proposal, from one 1860 use, of an iron rod used in clog-making, and not even in the end step.
Stephen Goranson
* Gold, David L. 2022-2023. “So far, no solid evidence for *English kibosh < Arabic krb’ǧ.” Leuvense Bijdragen – Leuven Contributions in Linguistics and Philology. Vol. 104. Pp. 188-257.
his alternate proposal, from one 1860 use, of an iron rod used in clog-making
Thanks for that, since his long comment didn’t even explain his alternate proposal.
According to four different comments above, and one on the previous thread, David L. Gold retracted his proposed origin from ‘iron rod used in clogmaking’ years ago. My impression from all those comments is that the “possibly likelier (partial) etymology” in his 2022-2023 publication is something else. Maybe someone can clarify.
Ah. I hope someone can, because it’s frustrating to just have “15. A possibly likelier (partial) etymology.”
Abstract here, PDF paywalled.
Who will put the kibosh on this pettifogging bosh ?
ETA: is it ok to say “kih-‘bosh” ? It’s how I heard it said 50 years ago. My German ambience encourages that now.
DLG 2024, page 250, back to “iron bar,” “clogmakers’ tool.”
As a matter of fact, I know the correct origin, which I am prepared to divulge on an individual basis on payment of a nominal fee of £50 for each request.
The information in question is copyright, and anyone divulging it freely will be liable to prosecution.
It’s Welsh, isn’t it? I’ll bet it’s Welsh.
Hah! You won’t catch me so easily!
Diatribe, page 250:
“If so, remaining to be explained is how the word _kibosh_ ‘iron bar…’ arose.
Incomplete though it is, the foregoing suggested etymology, unlike CGL’s, has the merits of being free of any semantic, phonological, or situational problems; it does not require us to suppose a meaning nowhere attested; and it involves no travelers, soldiers, or other di ex machina.”
To quote Sidney Morgenbesser:
“yeah, yeah.”
#
According to one anecdote, when J. L. Austin claimed that, although a double negative often implies a positive meaning (e.g., “he is not unlike his sister”), there is no language in which a double positive implies a negative, Morgenbesser retorted: “Yeah, yeah.” [14][2][15]
#
More formally expressed: repetition is not idempotent, but rather subadditive.
Welsh or KONGO? Find out this afternoon, back of the school.
The RIAA knows where you live.
And they have drones.
Notes on David L. Gold’s article on the Origin of Kibosh book:
a) We agree that kibosh was not derived from Yiddish, or to use his spelling, Yidish.
b) His dismissal of “reviewers” of our book is not fair.
c) His “A possibly likelier (partial) etymology”–in contrast to his title on “no solid evidence”–did not mention that our book already considered it.