an early kibosh--Ki'bosh--Feb. 1, 1835

[Stephen Goranson]

I have notes on articles on kibosh that I may send later, but, for now, pass along an early use of kibosh--actually Ki'bosh--that I found today. This dates after the stories about Wellington having put the kibosh on the Whigs and having floored (not decapitated) them, printed in numerous British newspapers in Nov. and Dec. 1834, and probably after the broadside (ca. 1830, according to the expert, J. A. Ferguson) "Penal Servitude!" that evidently equates the kibosh and the lash, but earlier (as far as I know) than other reported uses of more-or-less this spelling and sense, including by that by Dickens. Many spellings of kurbash etc. (whip, lash) are attested earlier many times.

Bell's Life in London and Sporting Chronicle (London). Sunday Feb. 1, 1835. Issue 644. p. 3 col. 1.
headline: "THE FLASH TAILORS." It supposedly reports London "dodges" by a firm of "builders of hunting kicksies [breeches, trousers]." "Nimrods" are invited to try "White Hunting Buckskin Cloth" that "some of the best Workmen Across Country...prefer...to Leather for Wet Work." Yet such are still called leather worked via "an _Unknown Artful Plan_, having enter'd into a Contract for Seven Years for the supply of Skins from the largest Parks in _Fudduxshire_.--To put the _Ki'bosh_ on those who Gammon to slave for Nix, they have chalk'd out the following list of charges...."

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

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