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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
kibosh
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ VERB
put
▪ The collapse of the junk-bond market has put the kibosh on a management buy-out of Wickes, an engineering and home-furnishings company.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Kibosh

Kibosh \Ki"bosh\, n.

  1. Nonsense; stuff; also, fashion; style. [Slang]

  2. Portland cement when thrown or blown into the recesses of carved stonework to intensify the shadows.

    To put the kibosh on, to dispose of; to squelch; to terminate; put an end to; to do for. [Slang]

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
kibosh

1836, kye-bosk, in British English slang phrase put the kibosh on, of unknown origin, despite intense speculation. The earliest citation is in Dickens. Looks Yiddish, but its original appearance in a piece set in the heavily Irish "Seven Dials" neighborhood in the West End of London seems to argue against this. One candidate is Irish caip bháis, caipín báis "cap of death," sometimes said to be the black cap a judge would don when pronouncing a death sentence, but in other sources identified as a gruesome method of execution "employed by Brit. forces against 1798 insurgents" [Bernard Share, "Slanguage, A Dictionary of Irish Slang"]. Or the word might somehow be connected with Turkish bosh (see bosh).

Wiktionary
kibosh

n. 1 (context slang dated English) nonsense, bosh. (19th c.) 2 (context slang English) A check or restrain element. (only used in put the kibosh on English). 3 (cx slang dated English) fashion; style. vb. (label en transitive) To decisively terminate.

WordNet
kibosh

v. stop from happening or developing; "Block his election"; "Halt the process" [syn: stop, halt, block]

Usage examples of "kibosh".

The speed of light is going to remain the limiting velocity not just for us, but for all those lively and interesting people out there in the adjacent galaxies, and that puts the kibosh on the whole concept of a galaxy-spanning civilization.

His flower seeds have evidently put the kibosh on the man in the mackinaw.

Mr Baker put the kibosh on Venus by reporting that he had spotted a UFO below cloud level and in a position which ruled out any connection with the planet.

She was staring down the front of her robe at the glowing mass between her breasts, the ultimate source of the word of power that had put the kibosh on her evil schemes.

If any of the three of them had come, it might have put the kibosh on this lachrymose morning.

Democratic congress, with its hands deep in the pockets of the very anti-sim Big Labor, was ready to put the kibosh on the whole thing.

Michael had put the whole kibosh on the prom, so it was kind of a moot point.

Carnot, Clausius, Kelvin, Gibbs, Boltzmann had been laying the foundations of the second law of thermodynamics, which puts the kibosh on perpetual motion machines and the like.

Had a deal to build a new jail, too, out in Antelope Valley, till the locals found out about their record, protested, and got it kiboshed.

I kiboshed the pursuit quicksville, glomming the tongue's Vice jacket, shooting the dope to Louella Parsons--a socially connected, prominently married carpet muncher with a yen for nightclub canaries was prime meat for the four-star _Herald_.

She wondered if she should ask directly if she had just committed her school to a major money laundering scheme but decided it might be insulting or incriminating and the risk of either was enough to put the kibosh on the question.

My guess is Clayton and Boyd wanted to put the kibosh on that style of advancement.

Well, we're going to have to put the kibosh on that little scenario.

If it did, the delay alone might be enough to put the kibosh on the whole deal.