Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. an absurd idea, an insulting sum, price or proposition.

1968

L. Rosten Joys of Yiddish 55: bubkes. bopkes. [...] 1. Something aburd, foolish, nonsensical. ‘I’ll sum up his idea in one word: bubkes!’.

2. nothing (in sense of a return, a reward), esp. in show business use.

1938		A.J. Liebling ‘The Jollity Building’ in Just Enough Liebling (2004) 247: The best you can get there [...] is a chance to work Saturday night at a ruptured saloon for bubkis.
1939		J. Weidman What’s In It For Me? 166: Twenty thousand bucks I should give him...Buppkes he’d get.
1989		W. Kotzwinkle Midnight Examiner (1990) 86: This city is on the verge of chaos. You call an ambulance and what do you get? Bupkis.
1990		(con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 105: No, I’ve heard bupkis.
2001		(con. 1964–8) J. Ellroy Cold Six Thousand 126: He had some Ruby shit. He had bopkes on Moore and Durfee.
2003		J. Ellroy ‘Stephanie’ in Destination: Morgue! (2004) 59: They ran gun checks, print checks, and show-ups [...] They got bupkes.
2005		M. Wex Born to Kvetch 158: Bupkes means ‘nothing,’ all right, but it’s a rather specific kind of nothing, as different from gornisht, the dictionary Yiddish for ‘nothing, as ‘nothing’ itself is from sweet fuck-all. The basic meaning of bupkes, which is spelled and pronounced bobkes [...] is dung, specifically the dung of sheep or goats.
2015		‘Chelsea G. Summers’ in Vice 28 Apr. 🌐 Our shared cluelessness, crazed hormones, and upbringing in the Middle-of-Assfuck-Nowhere, Vermont, added up to bupkis, knowledge-wise.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 57: Said books would yield boring bupkes.
2022		I. Fitzgerald Dirtbag, Massachusetts 57: [T]here had been a mistake and Y2K was bubkes.