קִשְׁקוּשׁ (kishkush) — scribble, doodle; idle chatter; rattling sound

Etymology

The root ק-ש-ק-ש is onomatopoeic, built on the reduplication of the syllable "kish" (like the sound of a coin striking ceramic). It is directly illustrated by the famous Aramaic proverb in Tractate Bava Metzia (85b): "istara bilegina kish kish karya" — "a coin in a jar goes kish-kish." The proverb is an interpretation of Proverbs 14:33 ("In the heart of the intelligent wisdom rests, but in the midst of fools it becomes known"): an empty vessel (the fool) makes noise, while a full one (the wise person) is silent.

The Talmudic sages used the verb קִשְׁקֵשׁ to denote the making of a metallic rattling sound. In Tractate Sotah (9b) the word appears in a description of the Holy Spirit "clinking before him like a bell (zog)." The same verb also appears in an agricultural context in Bava Metzia (89b) — "hiring a worker to weed and to kishkesh under the olive trees" — where it likely refers to hoeing, possibly named for the sound the hoe makes striking the ground. There is also an ancient confusion between קִשְׁקֵשׁ and the related verb כִּשְׁכֵּשׁ (to wag a tail), with the two verbs occasionally swapped even by important writers of the Hebrew Revival period such as Peretz Smolenskin and Mendele Moykher Sforim.

In the early twentieth century, as Israeli Hebrew developed, the verb קִשְׁקֵשׁ became associated primarily with the phrases "מקשקש בקומקום" (rattling in a kettle) and "קשקוש בקופסה" (rattling in a box). The first phrase is a translation of the Yiddish idiom "hakn a tshaynek" (literally "to bang on a teakettle"), used to mean "stop talking nonsense." The second refers to the charitable custom of soliciting donations by shaking a collection box. Because קִשְׁקֵשׁ בַּקּוּמְקוּם was so closely associated with foolish, empty talk, the noun קִשְׁקוּשׁ shifted to mean "idle chatter, nonsense" and then, by the late 1930s, "something of no worth or substance." In a 1939 newspaper review of Avraham Shlonsky's poetry, the word appears as a term for empty, hollow verse.

Within another decade the semantic range extended from idle words to empty visual marks, and קִשְׁקוּשׁ began to mean a meaningless drawing — a scribble or doodle. By 1957 this was the dominant sense for children, as illustrated by a charming newspaper dialogue between children Naomi and Nachum in Ha'aretz. Today the "scribble/doodle" sense is the word's primary usage.

Key Quotes

"אִסְתְּרָא בִּלְגִינָא קִישׁ קִישׁ קָרְיָא" — Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 85b (Aramaic proverb)

"אין כלום, לא משורר ולא שירה, אלא 'קישקוש', פיטפוטי מלים ללא תוכן, ללא רעיון, ללא רגש, ללא פיוט אמתי כלשהו" — Dr. Yitzhak Leib Baruch, Ha'Boker, 1939

"'אני מציירת קישקוש!' מכריזה נעמי בגאוה. 'זה לא קישקוש, זה בכלל שום דבר!' פוסק נחום. 'את לא יודעת בכלל איך מציירים קישקוש!'" — Dvora Alexander, Ha'aretz, summer 1957

Timeline

• Talmudic era: Verb קִשְׁקֵשׁ used for metallic rattling sound (Sotah 9b) and possibly hoeing (Bava Metzia 89b)
• Talmudic/midrashic era: Confusion with כִּשְׁכֵּשׁ (to wag a tail) begins; persists into modern times
• Early 20th century: Israeli Hebrew adopts קִשְׁקֵשׁ primarily through phrases meaning "to talk nonsense" and "to rattle a charity box"
• 1939: First clear attestation of קִשְׁקוּשׁ as "empty, worthless writing/speech" (Baruch's Shlonsky review)
• 1953: Use extends to meaningless architecture (Ha'al Hamishmar)
• 1957: Clear attestation of קִשְׁקוּשׁ = "scribble/doodle" in children's speech (Ha'aretz)
• Late 20th century: "Scribble/doodle" becomes the dominant meaning

Related Words

• שִׁרְבּוּט — scribble (parallel term; verb שִׁרְבֵּט has obscure Talmudic origins, possibly from Arabic shaḥbaṭ or the German-Yiddish verb shribt; came to mean "scribble" around mid-20th century)
• כִּשְׁכֵּשׁ — to wag (a tail); historically confused with קִשְׁקֵשׁ
• הֲבָלִים — nonsense, vanity (formal equivalent of the figurative sense)
• חַרְבָּשׁ — to do something carelessly, to ruin (Arabic loanword ḥarbaš, related term for sloppy scribbling)