more information on the kibosh, qirbach, kurbash

[Stephen Goranson]

The May 5, 1835 article in True Sun [London] , now that I have a full copy--thank you Garson!-- provides additional insight on the kibosh. As Garson noted, "the kibosh" is used twice (col. 4):
"They say so [make accusations] to rise the kibosh against me, and my wife" and "...they gets other Jews give me the kibosh upon me, and its all the same to me which of the whole set struck me." Now how to describe that person was a matter of dispute at the hearing. He claimed he was a Jew, but, others claimed he was not (possibly making the issue of "naturalized" or not a red herring), and the judge apparently decided he was an unreliable narrator. One witness claimed to have seen him and his wife scores of times covered in soot like chimney sweeps. That is notable (if true), as some of the earliest known accounts involve London chimney sweeps. A witness said he saw him wearing a turban.

Given the claim that he was threatened and struck with the kibosh, and given the defendant's reply that he finds them disagreeable, "but to talk of blows it quite ridiculous," we can conclude that "the kibosh" was an instrument used for striking blows--exactly as the kurbach, kourbach, qirbach, qurbash, courbache.

The non-rhotic Cockney version of the world helps explain why the meaning was lost later on many readers. And alternate interpretations proliferated. Nonsense, influenced by bosh (e.g., as, perhaps,  in "Kybosh Poetry" 1841*). And Chy-bosh as 18 pence. And echoic, like bash. And eventually also fashion, death hat, rain hat, mosquito net tent, Portland cement, comic characters names, etc.--none of which fit the earliest scenarios of being hit with a stick or whip.

These newly-found accounts reveal both the etymology and help show why it was, for years, lost.

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson

*
lWeekly Herald, page [387], vol. V, iss. 47
Publication Date:
August 14, 1841
Published as:
The Weekly Herald
Location:
New York, New York
Headline:
Kybosh Poetry [=nonsense verse?]
Article Type:
Poetry

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