Illustration from Dickens’s “Seven Dials” by George Cruikshank, 1839
11 September 2024
To put the kibosh on something means to stop or end it. There have been any number of proposed origins for the word and phrase, but only one of them has any substantial evidence to support it, and that is that kibosh come from the Turkish qirbach, or kurbash in its English spelling, a type of whip. This etymology was put forward in great detail by Gerald Cohen, Stephen Goranson, and Matthew Little in a 2018 monograph. While I find their argument convincing, the only thing that we can say with certainty about the origin is that the phrase first appears in the working-class slang of early nineteenth-century London.
What may be the first appearance of the phrase in print is a broadsheet ballad titled Penal Servitude, that dates to c. 1830. It “may be” the first because we don’t know for sure when the broadsheet was printed. It bears no date, but there are contextual clues within the poem that point to 1830, give or take a year or two, as the publication date. Only one copy of the broadsheet is known to exist, now housed in the National Library of Australia. The poem is a satirical take on the policy of transporting convicts to that continent, positing that life in the penal colony was better than being poor in London.
The relevant lines in the poem are:
There is one little dodge that 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 that is in the fourth line can be read in two ways. One can read it as i.e., making the fourth line an explanation of the slang in the third; put on the kibosh would then mean to institute flogging as punishment. Reading the lines this way makes the poem strong evidence for the kurbash origin. The word kurbash is recorded in English usage by 1814, and the loss of the /r/ can be readily explained by the non-rhotic nature of the London dialect.
The second reading would be to take the that is as instrumental. The only way to stop crime, put the kibosh on it, would be to do what is in the next line, that is to institute flogging. This reading has the advantage of keeping the sense of the phrase consistent and is still viable if kurbash is not the origin. The date of the poem is also less relevant for this reading. It still works even if the poem is considerably later.
There are also later appearances of kibosh indicating that it refers to a whip. The Oxford English Dictionary has this one from the London newspaper The Standard of 27 November 1834. Although that dictionary lists this quotation under the present-day sense of putting a stop to something, it’s more likely referring to a metaphorical whip. It could also be referring to a parliamentary whip, although given who is speaking that sense would seem unlikely. The article is a transcript from a court proceeding, this one regarding two chimney sweeps who were fined for touting their services on the public streets:
Mr. Dyer.—It’s no satisfaction to me, I assure you, to put the law in force; but I am bound to do so, where an offence is proved.
Smith.—Vell, I dusta say as your case is werry right, but I must get a mouthful of grub somehow.
Mr. Dyer put the moderate fine of 1s. and costs on both defendants.
Ah, said Smith, as he went out of the office, it vos the “Vigs” vot passed this bill, and vot the Duck Vellington put the kibosh on ’em for, and sarve ’em right. It warnt nothin else than this here hact vot “floored” them.
The swapping of /v/ and /w/ is characteristic of working-class London dialect of the period. The sweep’s reference to the Whigs and the Duke of Wellington deserves some explanation. A week prior to this hearing King William IV had dismissed the Whig government, headed by William Lamb, the 2nd Viscount Melbourne, because the king did not like the Whig’s reform measures. The Tories, under the Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington, briefly formed a government, but would lose in the general election the following January. This was the last time a British monarch dismissed a government because they personally disagreed with its policies.
Three days later, another paper, The Age, would give a fuller explanation of the political context of the sweep’s remark:
SWEEP OUT OF THE WHIGS.—Various have been the surmises, and numerous the versions of the reasons, why the KING kicked the Whigs out so unceremoniously. GROTE and EASTHOPE, in their dearly-purchased Chronicle, say one thing—Cupid PALMERSTON in his Globe says another—Mr. EDWARD WARBURTON WIGGETT, alias LISTON BULWER, in a brochure of more impertinences than one imagined he himself could string together, has his story upon “unquestionable authority,” &c. &c.; but which is the true one? None of them. The real cause of the “kiboshing” of the ex-Chancellor and his crew came out on Tuesday at Marlborough-street, before Mr. DYER. A chimney-sweep was convicted for having (according to the phraseology of this Whig Act) “hawked the streets”—upon which his Blackness remarked:—“It vos the Vigs vot passed this Bill, and what the Duke of VELLINGTON put the kibosh on ’em for, and sarve ’em right. It warnt nothing else than this here hact vot floored ‘em.”—Sooty is certainly a wiser man than WARBURTON WIGGETT, alias BULWER.
Then there is this transcript of a court proceeding from 15 May 1835 where kibosh certainly refers to a whip or instrument of beating:
The Lord Mayer—And was this because you were a naturalized Jew?
Myers—Please you, my lord. I an’t no such a thing; I am a real Jew, and I never was naturalized. They say so to rise the kibosh against me, and my vife, vot I was valking mid, vhen they comes down upon us. Ve goes reglar to the synagogue, and the gentlemen knows it.
[…]
The Lord Mayor—Can your husband swear that they struck him?
Myers—I don’t think I can swear; but they gets other Jews to give me the kibosh upon me, and its all the same to me which of the whole set struck me.
Another early, and far more famous, use of the phrase is by Charles Dickens in his 1835 “Seven Dials,” one of his Sketches by Boz. In that sketch, he describes an argument between two drunk, women that had drawn the attention of a small crowd. Put the kyebosh on in this instance is usually read to be the put-a-stop-to sense, but it can more sensibly be read to refer to a literal beating or flogging:
“What do you mean by hussies?” interrupts a champion of the other party, who has evinced a strong inclination throughout to get up a branch fight on her own account. (“Hoo-roa,” ejaculates a pot-boy in a parenthesis, “put the kyebosh on her Mary.”)
Seven Dials is a junction of seven streets in the Covent Garden neighborhood of London. At the time, it was also the center of London’s printing of broadsheet ballads, so there is a connection between the place and the Penal Servitude ballad. Some later editions change the word to kye-bosk, a fact that has tripped up some would-be etymologists. Kyebosh is the spelling in the earliest print versions. It’s hyphenated, kye-bosh, in the original printing, but there the word is broken up by a line break. Later printings have retained the hyphen, presumably because the word was unfamiliar to the printers.
The semantic progression would seem to be from the Turkish kurbash to kibosh meaning a literal whip, to it meaning metaphorical whip, and finally to the result of the whipping, that is an end to the undesirable activity.
But the kurbash origin is by no means generally accepted. The biggest problem with the kurbash origin is the change in pronunciation. While the dropping of the /r/ is readily explained, the vowel changes are not. Some argue that there is no plausible route for the Turkish word to make it into working-class London dialect, but the fact that kurbash is attested to in English some fifteen years earlier quashes this particular objection. Of the major dictionaries, only American Heritage gives any credence to Cohen, Goranson, and Little’s arguments. The OED gives the etymology of kibosh as “of unknown origin.” Merriam-Webster says it is “of unknown origin.” And etymologist David Gold has published an article arguing unconvincingly that Cohen, Goranson, and Little are incorrect.
Theirs isn’t the only proposed etymology, but the others have little or no evidence to support them. I’m not going to exhaustively list all of the proposals, but I will briefly discuss and dismiss three of the most prominent ones.
Perhaps the most commonly touted explanation for the phrase is that it’s from the Irish caipín báis (death cap), referring either to the black cap used by a judge when pronouncing a death sentence or, more gruesomely, to burning pitch poured onto the heads of captured Irish insurgents by the English. But evidently, other than as the name of the poisonous mushroom, this Irish phrase doesn’t exist outside of proposed etymologies for kibosh.
Also often suggested is that it is from the Hebrew chi (eighteen) + bosh (variation and clipping of poshet, penny), eighteen pence signifying something of little value. But there is no evidence of any Hebrew or Jewish connection to the word, which arises in working-class, London slang, nor is there any explanation for how a word meaning small came to refer to ending or stopping something. (One of the early citations is from the speech of a Jewish man, but other uses from the period are not.)
Finally, more plausible but still lacking evidence, is the suggestion that it comes from ki- (emphatic syllable) + bosh (nonsense, stuff). But again, the semantic shift is unexplained.
Sources:
American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2022, s.v. kibosh, n.
Cohen, Gerald, Stephen Goranson, and Matthew Little. Origin of Kibosh. Routledge Studies in Etymology. London: Routledge, 2018.
Cohen, Gerald Leonard, Matthew Little, and Stephen Goranson. “Revisit to Kibosh—Rejecting the Irish ‘Cap-of-Death’ Etymology.” Comments on Etymology, 49.5, February 2020, 2–12. Missouri University of Science and Technology: Scholars’ Mine.
Dickens, Charles (pseud. Boz). “Scenes and Characters.—No. 1. Seven Dials.” Bells Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, 27 September 1835, 1/1. NewspaperArchive.com.
Gold, David L. “So Far, No Solid Evidence for *English kibosh < Arabic krb’ğ.” Leuvensche Bijdragen, 104, 2022, 188–257.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. kibosh v., kibosh, n.
Liberman, Anatoly. “Unable to Put the Kibosh on a Hard Word.” OUPblog, 19 May 2010.
Merriam-Webster.com, 28 July 2024, s.v. kibosh, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2019, s.v. kibosh, v., kibosh, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. kurbash, n.
“Police.” The Standard (London), 27 November 1834, 4/2. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.
“Police Intelligence. Mansion-House.” True Sun (London), 15 May 1835, 4/4. NewspaperArchive.com.
Quinion, Michael. “Putting the Kibosh on It.” World Wide Words, 27 March 2016.
“Sweep Out of the Whigs.” The Age (London), 30 November 1834, 382/3. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals.
Image credit: George Cruikshank, 1839. Wellcome Collection. Public domain image.