Anything new to say about Dickens and language? Not really.
Crystal chooses _Sketches by Boz_, a collection of newspaper pieces
published, as it happens, on this date in 1836.

There's a description of a couple of lower-class women (somewhat the
worse for drink) having a row in a London street. One insults the other
using the word "hussy" -- but that's not new.
Then:

'Hooroar,' ejaculates a pot-boy in parenthesis, 'put the kye-bosk on
her, Mary!'

- hooroar is just a variant of "hurrah"
- pot-boy "A boy or young man employed in a public house, etc., to serve
drinks or collect glasses"
- kye-bosk: More often spelled kibosh. Crystal says this is the first
attestation, but OED (now, at least) has a newspaper citation from a
couple of years earlier. Actually there are two usages: put the kibosh
on (as here, from 1834) and kibosh (v.t., from 1841), both meaning to
put an end to something, roughly. I don't think I've ever heard this in
North America, but it's known here; my wife uses it frequently.

Etymology unknown, of course, though OED takes note of some suggestions.
Deverson (OxNZDic) has kibosh (n.) 'nonsense', but this must be through
confusion with bosh (which is from Turkish).

On 2024-02-07, Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

> couple of years earlier. Actually there are two usages: put the kibosh
> on (as here, from 1834) and kibosh (v.t., from 1841), both meaning to
> put an end to something, roughly. I don't think I've ever heard this in
> North America, but it's known here; my wife uses it frequently.

"To put the kibosh on" is certainly used in North America.
Just do a Google search for it over a newspaper site.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

On 2/7/2024 3:10 AM, Ross Clark wrote:
> Anything new to say about Dickens and language? Not really.
> Crystal chooses _Sketches by Boz_, a collection of newspaper pieces
> published, as it happens, on this date in 1836.
>
> There's a description of a couple of lower-class women (somewhat the
> worse for drink) having a row in a London street. One insults the other
> using the word "hussy" -- but that's not new.
> Then:
>
> 'Hooroar,' ejaculates a pot-boy in parenthesis, 'put the kye-bosk on
> her, Mary!'
>
> - hooroar is just a variant of "hurrah"
> - pot-boy "A boy or young man employed in a public house, etc., to serve
> drinks or collect glasses"
> - kye-bosk: More often spelled kibosh. Crystal says this is the first
> attestation, but OED (now, at least) has a newspaper citation from a
> couple of years earlier. Actually there are two usages: put the kibosh
> on (as here, from 1834) and kibosh (v.t., from 1841), both meaning to
> put an end to something, roughly. I don't think I've ever heard this in
> North America, but it's known here; my wife uses it frequently.
>
> Etymology unknown, of course, though OED takes note of some suggestions.
> Deverson (OxNZDic) has kibosh (n.) 'nonsense', but this must be through
> confusion with bosh (which is from Turkish).

The phrase “put the kibosh on,” meaning “to put an end to,” dates
back to an early 19th century poem, but a Cockney chimney sweep brought
the phrase to the general public, says Dr. Gerald Cohen, a professor of
German and Russian at Missouri University of Science and Technology.
----Dec 18, 2017

Etymology 1

The origin of the noun is uncertain; the following etymologies have been
suggested:

A non-rhotic variant of kurbash (“heavy whip, lash”),[1][2] from Arabic
⁧كُرْبَاج⁩ (kurbāj, “lash, whip”), or from its etymon Ottoman Turkish
⁧قرباچ⁩ (kırbaç, “lash, whip”) (whence Turkish kırbaç (“whip”)).[3][4]

From Irish caidhp bháis (literally “death cap”), said to denote, among
other things, the black cap worn by English judges when pronouncing the
death sentence, the hood put on a person before they were put to death
by hanging, or a form of torture called pitchcapping.[3] However, there
appears to be no convincing evidence that the term was used in these
senses.[5][6]

From a Yiddish word (compare Hebrew ⁧כָּבַשׁ⁩ (kavásh, “to conquer,
subjugate”));[3] however, no such word has been found.[7]

From Middle English cabochen (“to cut off (the head, chiefly of a
deer), behead”),[8] from Middle French cabocher (“to cut off (the
head)”), from caboche (“the head”) (Northern France, informal) (whence
Middle English caboche (“head of cabbage”)),[9] from Italian capocchia
(“the head”) (derogatory), ultimately from Latin caput (“the head”).[10]
The Middle English word is said to have been adopted in Cockney slang.[11]

Clogmakers’ term kibosh (“iron bar about a foot long that, when hot, is
used to soften and smooth leather”).[11]