I used the word kibosh in Wordplay and then decided to look it up to see its roots. It seems to be an interesting word. According to the dictionaries and etymology.com, its etymology is unknown. Here is what etymology.com says about it:

"1836, kye-bosk, in slang phrase put the kibosh on, of unknown origin, despite intense speculation. Looks Yiddish, but origin in early 19c. English slang seems to argue against this. One candidate is Ir. caip bháis, caipín báis 'cap of death,' sometimes said to be the black cap a judge would don when pronouncing a death sentence, but in other sources identified as a gruesome method of execution 'employed by Brit. forces against 1798 insurgents' [Bernard Share, 'Slanguage, A Dictionary of Irish Slang']. Or it may somehow be connected with Turkish bosh (see bosh)."

The Online OED cites Dickens as the first to use the word, though he spells bosh as bosk, and the OED inserts [sic] after the use of the word:

"1836 DICKENS Sk. Boz, Seven Dials, ‘Hoo-roar’, ejaculates a pot-boy in a parenthesis, ‘put the kye-bosk [sic] on her, Mary’."

Does anybody here know anything more about the word?

I thought Kibosh was Yiddish for CBS. (For those of you abroad: CBS.

Here's a miscellaneously anthologistic Limerick, apropos of nothing at all ......



We're guilty of procrastination
Our base is an infirm foundation
Our potions and meds
Often go to our heads
We belong to the D Generation