A Dictionary of Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words / Used at the Present Day in the Streets of London; the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; the Houses of Parliament; the Dens of St. Giles; and the Palaces of St. James.

by John Camden Hotten

KENNEDY, to strike or kill with a poker. A St. Giles’ term, so given from a man of that name being killed by a poker. Frequently shortened to NEDDY.

KENT RAG, or CLOUT, a cotton handkerchief.

KERTEVER-CARTZO, the venereal disease. From the Lingua Franca, CATTIVO, bad, and CAZZO, the male generative organ.

KETCH, or JACK KETCH, the popular name for a public hangman—derived from a person of that name who officiated in the reign of Charles II.—See Macaulay’s History of England, p. 626.

KIBOSH, nonsense, stuff, humbug; “it’s all KIBOSH,” i.e., palaver or nonsense; “to put on the KIBOSH,” to run down, slander, degrade, &c.—See [BOSH].

KICK, a moment; “I’ll be there in a KICK,” i.e., in a minute.

KICK, a sixpence; “two and a KICK,” two shillings and sixpence.

KICK, a pocket.

KICK THE BUCKET, to die.—Norfolk. According to Forby, a metaphor taken from the descent of a well or mine, which is of course absurd. The Rev. E. S. Taylor supplies me with the following note from his MS. additions to the work of the East-Anglian lexicographer:—

“The allusion is to the way in which a slaughtered pig is hung up, viz., by passing the ends of a bent piece of wood behind the tendons of the hind legs, and so suspending it to a hook in a beam above. This piece of wood is locally termed a bucket, and so by a coarse metaphor the phrase came to signify to die. Compare the Norfolk phrase “as wrong as a bucket.”