more kybosh & kurbash quotes

Stephen Goranson goranson at DUKE.EDU
Wed Jun 30 13:53:45 UTC 2010


1) On True Sun 1835, "to rise the kibosh against me" I am not the only one to suggest the reading "r[a]ise the kibosh." If so, compare (at Hathi Trust):
Title: Sielanka a forest picture, and other stories
Author: Sienkiewicz, Henryk 1846-1916; Jeremiah Curtin trans.
Date: 1898 (Boston).
 "I'll flog him to death!" repeated Gebhr. "And I tell you that you shall not raise the kurbash at either of them. If you do, for every blow, I shall give you ten."

2)  Cleveland, Leroy Victor, ed..  Anti-Evolution Compendium.  High Way Press: Henniker, N. H. Google Books mistakenly gives the date as 1954, but, verified on paper, the quote is from Supplement 7, (v. 28 no. 1) April-June, 1958 in "Culture, Science and Education" by the editor, p. 2.
  [the following is a negative reaction to Cultural Foundations of Education by Theodore Brameld (1957):]
 The younger men and women seem NOT to be following the "leftist" line, and because of that are being roundly scolded by some who are saddened to see them responding to the best of the past and the values from the deepest waters of the mainstream of the centuries.   But the thousands and scores of thousands of scientific and socialistic men can, it is hoped, be awakened to act and put the kurbash or "kybosh" to the Bible believers. [Of course, his collocation of "[put the] kurbash" and "kybosh" and the 1892 book's "Hamidi's _kibosh_ (rhinoceros-hide stick)" text do not, by themselves, prove an etymology; but they, along with other suggestive data, might invite consideration.]

3)   If we take the definition Doug Wilson quoted by J. R. Ware--_Passing English of the Victorian Era_ (1909): p. 164: p. 164:
<<*Kwy* (_Fast Life_, 1800-40). First syllable of 'quietus' -- death.>>--
and, for conversation's sake, allow all the other steps and ifs, in testing it on the 1834 quote involving Wellington, we can see that he was not said to have killed the Whigs, but rather he "floored" them, as if, perhaps. by flogging.

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

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