Meaning: (Slang) The permanent ending of something, making it impossible, as a heavy downpour can put the kibosh on a baseball game.
Notes: Today's Word is more a word of the spoken vernacular than of written English. For that reason, its spelling has varied quite a bit over the decades. Beginning with kye-bosk, it has been spelled kyebosh, kye-bosh, and kybosh. Everyone generally agrees now on the spelling we are using, though some dictionaries accept kybosh as a variant.
In Play: Today's word is almost always heard in the idiomatic phrase, "put the kibosh on" something; however, it can be used outside this phrase: "If mom finds out we are planning a weekend at the shore, all our plans will get the old kibosh." The noun can also be used as a verb meaning "to end something permanently", as in "Greta Mae kiboshed the wedding plans when she learned that Archie was on Viagra."
Word History: Today's Word is of mysterious origin. It first appeared as kye-bosk in 1836 in the story 'Seven Dials' in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Although it looks Yiddish, the date of its origin makes a Yiddish source highly unlikely. A possible source is Irish caip bháis "cap of death", the reference of which would be unclear in this etymology: a judge's hat or a method of execution used by the British military?
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