ABSTRACT
On September 17, 2010 Stephen Goranson sent two very important messages to the American Dialect Society listserv (ads-l) titled 'Kibosh (lash) ca. 1830'. He first cited the Penal Servitude! verse in which 'kibosh' appears and offered to print the entire poem, if members expressed interest. Goranson then wrote in his second message: 'Broadside from the Ferguson Collection, 1390a, in the National Library of Australia, 9 1/2 × 3 1/2 inches'. Goranson's message concluded: 'The word "lash" is as clear as day in the scan, but is mistranscribed as "cash" in H. Anderson, Farewell to Old England (1964: 92) and Farewell to Judges & Juries (2000:55)'. In several ads-l messages reproduced in Cohen 2010, there was considerable hesitancy to accept the derivation of kibosh from kurbash on the grounds that Cockneys would not likely have been familiar with the Middle Eastern whip, and the earliest attestations of kibosh are in Cockney speech.
