Charles Dickens born (7-2-1812)
From
Ross Clark@21:1/5 to
All on Thu Feb 8 00:10:54 2024
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).
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