Kibosh

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jay calling from Fort Worth, Texas.

Hi, Jay, welcome.

Hey there.

What can we do for you?

Well, you know, the other day I was listening, well, it was a couple weeks ago, I was listening to NPR, and they were having a pledge drive, and, you know, there was two commentators on there, and they were talking back and forth, and they were talking about the business model of NPR and how they’re different from other stations, because other stations, they sell bits of your time and try to sell you things you don’t really need, like perhaps a cream for your elbows to make them as smooth as a baby’s bottom.

No, that’s cute.

So the other commentator comes back and goes, you know, I think we ordered that as one of our thank you gifts for the pledge drive, right? Of course, they were joking around.

And the other commentator came back with the statement, we had to put the kibosh on that order.

And as soon as I heard the word kibosh, it struck me that that was a word that I had grown up with, but I haven’t heard in many, many years since I left my home state.

And not only have I not heard that word in 15 years, but it struck me that that is not how we pronounced it.

Where I came from, up in Wisconsin, we pronounced it kibosh, not kibosh.

So I was curious both what that word means and how come this guy pronounced it different and how come I haven’t heard it in 20 years even though I now realize it was a common word when I grew up.

So you’ve got a pronunciation difference here.

You might have a regional difference here.

Can you tell us a little bit about what you think kibosh means?

Well, I mean, basically it would mean, just like the commentators use there on NPR, to put a stop to something.

To put a stop, exactly.

Hold it or something.

And it’s a quick stop.

It’s usually something rather sudden, right? We’re not talking about a gradual tailing away.

That’s right.

There are different pronunciations for this.

The kibosh pronunciation is the most common.

Some people do say kibosh.

Probably people who didn’t learn it by hearing it.

Probably people who learned it by seeing it and reading it in their books or comic books or wherever.

You might see that kind of thing.

Kibosh?

Yeah.

There are a couple really interesting things about this word.

The first known use that we have of this word in print was by Charles Dickens.

Oh, really?

Yeah, he was writing it under this pseudonym, Boz, in 1836.

And he uses it in the language of Cockneys.

And in the very first edition, he spelled it K-Y-E hyphen B-O-S-H.

But in all subsequent editions, he changed the spelling to K-Y-E hyphen B-O-S-K to better represent what was happening in the language of Cockneys to people in this particular part of London.

So it’s really interesting.

And ever since then, it’s more or less met the same thing.

So it’s an end.

It’s something final.

It’s a stamping out.

It’s a quick finish.

And it can also be a verb.

You can kibosh something or kibosh something.

That kibosh pronunciation is far more common, but it’s not necessarily the correct one because it’s slang.

This word is so variable over its history and its spelling and how it’s used.

It’s a noun and a verb.

Sometimes it’s just an interjection.

It’s just a really interesting kind of expression.

But you had another question that I don’t think I can answer, but why do you think that you haven’t heard it very often in 20 years?

I don’t know.

I guess I don’t speak Texan or something.

Because I don’t think there’s a regional component to it.

I think it’s fairly widespread American, just good American English.

And frankly, it’s used in the UK as well.

Okay.

Because you’ll find it in the mouths and the pens of people from all across the 50 United States.

Well, now, I don’t remember seeing it or hearing it until I was gone from Kentucky, that’s for sure.

Really?

Yeah.

I wonder.

Kibosh.

By the way, we don’t know the origin of the word, the ultimate origin.

Some people have speculated that it comes from Hebrew or Yiddish.

Some people have speculated that it comes from… Turkish.

Irish languages.

None of these have any data whatsoever to support them.

It is explicitly origin unknown and has been researched to the hilt, to the ultimate.

Like people have put too many years into trying to figure out where this word came from.

All right.

So there we go.

Jay, thank you so much for calling.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

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