Kibosh origin?

[Geoffrey S. Nathan]

Michael wrote:

A World Wide Words subscriber suggests that the origin of "kibosh" might
lie in the Hebrew root "c-b-sh" which she tells me means to subjugate or
oppress. She notes that the vernacular usage means to end or to stop and
that it might therefore have been applied by Jews in the sense of the
early English examples. Would someone versed in Hebrew care to comment?



and Joel wrote:



Might not the Hebrew word have been imported from an Arabic or
Turkish source? I can imagine Jewish captives or slaves being
subject to the kurbash, and the word becoming associated with subjugation.

and Steven replied:

Since no one else responded, I will. I am relatively more familiar with
ancient Hebrew than with modern Hebrew (though perhaps little was
newly-composed in the 1830s), and even less with Yiddish. I did read everything
in Anatoly Liberman's bibliography, and considerably more. Unless your correspondent
supplied surprisingly-relevant dated sentences, I suggest the proposal has
little to commend it, though I'll read more if you send more. And I could write
more about the proposal of M. Davis, long-time London Hebrew teacher,
should it seem useful.

I'd have to agree with Steven here about the lack of evidence for a Yiddish origin. It does need to be pointed out, however, that there is a Biblical Hebrew root /k-b-sh/ meaning 'press down, oppress, crush' with the same associated metaphorical extensions as English. It is not borrowed, because, according to Klein's Etymological Hebrew Dictionary, it has cognates in most of the other Semitic languages.
But nobody seems to be able to produce a Yiddish use of this root, so the 'lash' story seems more credible to me.

Geoffrey S. Nathan
Faculty Liaison, C&IT
and Professor, Linguistics Program
+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)
+1 (313) 577-8621 (English/Linguistics)

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