kibosh
Dave Wilton, Monday, September 04, 2006
The phrase to put the kibosh on means to quash, to put a stop to; the origin of kibosh is unknown. It has been suggested by some that it is from Yiddish, but there is no evidence to support this contention.
The earliest known use is from Dickens’s 1836 Sketches by Boz:
“Hoo-roar," ejaculates a pot-boy in a parenthesis, “put the kye-bosk [sic] on her, Mary.”
The -sk ending here is intended to represent Cockney pronunciation.
(Sources: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition; Historical Dictionary of American Slang)
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Copyright 1997-2008, by David Wilton
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My mother said she was always told that kibosh came from the gaelic caidhp bhais meaning death cap, which is a type of poisonous mushroom. I looked this up on line and there doesn’t seem to be any proof one way or the other but my mother thinks it has been a long time in use in Kerry and she remembers elderly nuns using it in its gaelic form.