Kibosh origin?

[Joel S. Berson]

How did you get to Yiddish?  Previous speakers have only mentioned Hebrew.

And:
>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.

Arabic is a Semitic language, is it not?  What in Klein rules out it
having come to Hebrew from Arabic?

Joel


At 8/28/2010 06:37 AM, Geoffrey S. Nathan wrote:
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>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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