Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. Informal To look on and offer unwanted, usually meddlesome advice to others.
- v. Informal To chat; converse.
Wiktionary
- v. To chat; to gossip; to make small talk or idle chatter.
- v. To give unsolicited or unwanted advice or make unhelpful or idle comments, especially to someone playing a game.
WordNet 3.0
- v. make unwanted and intrusive comments
Etymologies
- From Yiddish קיבעצן (kibitsn), from Hebrew קבץ, influenced by German kiebitzen. (Wiktionary)
- Yiddish kibitsen, from German kiebitzen, from Kiebitz, pewit, kibitzer, from Middle High German gībitz, pewit, of imitative origin. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Variations on "kibitz" show up in 10 cases, "maven" in four, "klutz" in three and "schlemiel" in five (two of which refer to Woody Allen).”
“Let's kibitz by the fire; let's bake rugelach for Santa; and let's light unscented candles on a 12-branched candelabrum.”
The Huffington Post: Danny Licht: Jews for Christmas, or How to Make the Holidays Less Blue
“Occasionally, I even got the chance to kibitz a bit, as when one of the writers phoned my office to pick my brain on which members of the Legion of Super-Heroes (which I also edited) might be ready to make the leap to animation in the Superman episode “New Kids in Town”.”
Superman: The Complete Animated Series » DVDs Worth Watching
“Moms can kibitz and kvell about why their kids are such a great catch and what they're looking for in a match.”
USA Today: Do you want your Jewish mother playing matchmaker?
“Bookninja began as an online forum for a bunch of writers to kibitz and argue about the state of the book world but has since evolved into … an online form for a bunch of writers to kibitz and argue about the book world.”
“I love it when other people do the heavy lifting and I can just kibitz around the corners.”
“At one of these kinds of "real-life" get-togethers, it's fascinating to see, for instance, Chelsea Handler kibitz with Laura Bush and her daughters; or Condoleezza Rice bopping along to a duet by Debbie Harry and Theopholis London; or Jennifer Aniston chatting with a victim of human sex trafficking.”
“My publishers have explained to me that they don't get a say - they can kibitz, of course.”
[Guest Post] Part 1: A Manifesto of Imaginative Literature by Justin Allen
“My grandmother used to kibitz, "Friends you choose; family you're stuck with.”
The Washington Post: I asked Helen Thomas about Israel. Her answer revealed more than you think.
“But that didn't prevent him from calling Spain's prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the other day to kibitz about getting Spain's fiscal house in order.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘kibitz’.
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Of Imitative Origin
Words formed in imitation of the sound of the things they signify.
bawl, biff, blizzard, blob, blooper, bob, boff, bomb, bonkers, boo, borborygmus, brouhaha and 148 more...
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wakcy's Words
apocalypse, interlude, drome, absolution, atrocity, ruse, pristine, mason, reparable, deteriorate, pyramid, hipster and 283 more...
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slackagogo's Words
agelast, aggiornamento, zaftig, wowserism, vox barbara, verbigeration, tchotchke, tautology, sycophant, spoonerism, solipsism, sobriquet and 288 more...
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inkhorn's Words
inkhorn, aplomb, apotheosis, asinine, avatar, bombastic, boorish, bromide, bucolic, cagey, canvass, digress and 991 more...
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zanshin's Words
gargoyle, ennui, paradigm, aardvark, verisimilitude, ghoti, tenacity, nescience, guillemet, squonk, maven, moxie and 210 more...
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Infinite Jest
Words taken from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
prorector, monograph, post-fourier, snuffle, rototremble, creatus, enfilade, subanimalistic, balletic, espadrilles, leonine, cirri and 1153 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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Words I Like
Random vocabulary words that I am particularly fond of.
absquatulate, anthropophagy, bibliobibuli, boeotian, boondoggle, borborygmic, brobdingnagian, brummagem, bugaboo, callipygian, cataglottism, chiaroscuro and 92 more...
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Critischism
Divisive devices; emissary of Momus.
peevology, pessimize, philippic, philopolemic, billingsgate, charientism, criticaster, ludification, flyting, miserabilism, misprize, admonish and 145 more...
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BetaRish's Words
brigand, teetotum, internship, thribble, neologism, readies, resfest, tohubohu, tanzen, regression, nutlet, bandolier and 111 more...
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words from the German
kindergarten, sturm und drang, schadenfreude, zeppelin, blitzkreig, blitz, krieg, panzer, angst, nazi, zeitgeist, doppelganger and 107 more...
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Words That Populate My Mind
This is a collection of words I love, old ones that I love the sound of when I repeat them for years and new ones coined in news articles on up and coming trends and technologies - most of them I k...
aroma, mojo, blithely, fringe, fray, synchronicity, doublespeak, buzzword, thoughtcrime, portmanteau, newspeak, oldspeak and 963 more...
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EN - funny (single) words
"Fornication" is not equal to "formication".
Words with funny meaning, spelling or both.biffy, bibcock, barratry, bastinado, bezonian, bibliobibuli, bodewash, boeotian, boondoggle, borborygmic, bosky, brobdingnagian and 729 more...
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New words, not to be confused with th...
maladroit, aphasia, delphinium, bromide, greenhorn, just deserts, loth, supplanted, steeplechase, steeple, annex, vestments and 236 more...
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from the Yiddish
schlep, kvetch, shiksha, dreck, goyim, tuccus, potch, boychik, putz, schmuck, chutzpah, golem and 19 more...
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Yiddish
schpilkis, kibosh, chutzpah, schlep, nosh, kvetch, mensch, meshugga, schmaltz, schmaltzy, schtick, klezmer and 4 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for kibitz.
nickmiller I like the idea that senseless chatter is like the twitter of little birds... to human ears! Of course, to bird ears it's information-rich: 'back off; danger coming; mate with me'. May 8, 2007