kibosh

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The Word of the Day for May 28 is:

kibosh   \KYE-bahsh\   noun
     : something that serves as a check or stop

Example sentence:
     "She was all for turning them in to the authorities and you 
put the kibosh on that." (Mickey Spillane, _The Big Kill_)

Did you know? 
     For over a century "kibosh" has taxed the ingenuity of 
etymologists. It was prominent enough in lower-class London 
speech to attract the attention of Charles Dickens, who used it 
in 1836 in an early sketch, but little else is certain. Claims 
were once made that it was Yiddish, despite the absence of a 
plausible Yiddish source. Another hypothesis points to 
Irish "caidhp bhais," literally, "coif (or cap) of death," 
explained as headgear a judge put on when pronouncing a death 
sentence, or as a covering pulled over the face of a corpse when 
a coffin was closed. But evidence for any metaphorical use of 
this phrase in Irish is lacking, and "kibosh" is not recorded in 
English as spoken in Ireland until decades after Dickens' use.