I looked this up on line at Merriam-Webster online and it said “origins unknown.”
Really?
Anyone have a more authoritative dictionary (well, better than m-w.com anyway, it is the free version and not so thorough) that can provide a hint at the origins of “kibosh” or is it truly unknown?
The OED says:
It isn’t unusual for a slang term to be of uncertain origin, though. And that’s true of even more common words: the origin of “bird,” for instance, is unclear (some think it comes from “brood,” but the evidence is problematic).
The OED says it’s “obscure,” and that some speculate a Yiddish origin. Sorry.
Ah! Thanks.
That’s sort of what I was guessing, that it was like “shyster” with debatable history – presumably Yiddish or German roots, but never proven with any certainty (I vaguely remember a Straight Dope column about that one).
I just never realized that “kibosh” was one of those and had always assumed it had a more readily traceable etimology.
Thanks again.
It derives from Yiddish. This is the most popular explanation, though the details differ. One supposition is that it comes from the Yiddish word Kabas or Kabbasten, “to suppress”. Another view is much stranger, saying that it is an acronym formed from the initial letters of three Yiddish words meaning 18 British coins: the Hebrew chai for 18 and shekel, meaning coin, with British in the middle. But, as Leo Rosten argues, that ought to make kibrosh rather than kibosh. He does say that there was special significance in the number 18, since in gematria (an important method of divination among Jews at one time), this was the number equivalent of the word life.
It is said by some (notably Julian Franklyn) to have an heraldic origin, being derived from caboshed which is the heraldic description of the emblem of an animal which is shown full-face, but cut off close to the ears so that no neck shows.
The Irish poet, Padric Colum, believes the word originates in the Irish Gaelic phrase cie báis meaning “cap of death”. The word báis is apparently pronounced “bawsh” and cie is presumably pronounced with a hard initial consonant, rather like “kai”.
Webster’s New World Dictionary apparently derives it from Middle High German kiebe, meaning “carrion”.
http://www.quinion.com/words/articles/kibosh.htm
Quint. If you’re gonna lift Quinion’s article in almost totality, at least lift the most important part. You merely listed the speculative suggestions. Michael started out his article by saying that no one actually knows.