The especial Gipsy characteristic in this letter is the constant use of the name of God, and the pious profusion of blessings. “She’s the blessing-est old woman I ever came across,” was very well said of an old Rommany dame in England. And yet these well-wishings are not always insincere, and they are earnest enough when uttered in Gipsy.
CHAPTER VI. GIPSY WORDS WHICH HAVE PASSED INTO ENGLISH SLANG.
Jockey.—Tool.—Cove or Covey.—Hook, Hookey, and Walker, Hocus, Hanky-Panky, and Hocus-Pocus.—Shindy.—Row.—Chivvy.—Bunged Eye.—Shavers.—Clichy.—Caliban.—A Rum ’un.—Pal.—Trash.—Cadger.—Cad.—Bosh.—Bats.—Chee-chee.—The Cheese.—Chiv Fencer.—Cooter.—Gorger.—Dick.—Dook.—Tanner.—Drum.—Gibberish.—Ken.—Lil.—Loure.—Loafer.—Maunder.—Moke.—Parny.—Posh.—Queer. Raclan.—Bivvy.—Rigs.—Moll.—Distarabin.—Tiny.—Toffer.—Tool.—Punch.—Wardo.—Voker (one of Mr Hotten’s Gipsy words).—Welcher.—Yack.—Lushy.—A Mull.—Pross.—Toshers.—Up to Trap.—Barney.—Beebee.—Cull, Culley.—Jomer.—Bloke.—Duffer.—Niggling.—Mug.—Bamboozle, Slang, and Bite.—Rules to be observed in determining the Etymology of Gipsy Words.
Though the language of the Gipsies has been kept a great secret for centuries, still a few words have in England oozed out here and there from some unguarded crevice, and become a portion of our tongue. There is, it must be admitted, a great difficulty in tracing, with anything like accuracy, the real origin or identity of such expressions. Some of them came into English centuries ago, and during that time great changes have taken place in Rommany. At least one-third of the words now used by Scottish Gipsies are unintelligible to their English brothers. To satisfy myself on this point, I have examined an intelligent English Gipsy on the Scottish Gipsy vocabularies in Mr Simpson’s work, and found it was as I anticipated; a statement which will not appear incredible when it is remembered, that even the Rommany of Yetholm have a dialect marked and distinct from that of other Scotch Gipsies. As for England, numbers of the words collected by William Marsden, and Jacob Bryant, in 1784-5, Dr Bright in 1817, and by Harriott in 1830, are not known at the present day to any Gipsies whom I have met. Again, it should be remembered that the pronunciation of Rommany differs widely with individuals; thus the word which is given as cumbo, a hill, by Bryant, I have heard very distinctly pronounced choomure.
I believe that to Mr Borrow is due the discovery that the word JOCKEY is of Gipsy origin, and derived from chuckni, which means a whip. For nothing is more clearly established than that the jockey-whip was the original term in which this word first made its appearance on the turf, and that the chuckni was a peculiar form of whip, very long and heavy, first used by the Gipsies. “Jockeyism,” says Mr Borrow, “properly means the management of a whip, and the word jockey is neither more nor less than the term, slightly modified, by which they designate the formidable whips which they usually carry, and which are at present in general use among horse-traffickers, under the title of jockey-whips.” In Hungary and Germany the word occurs as tschuckini or chookni, and tschupni.
Many of my readers are doubtless familiar with the word to TOOL as applied to dexterously managing the reins and driving horses. ‘To tool the horses down the road,’ is indeed rather a fine word of its class, being as much used in certain clubs as in stables, and often denotes stylish and gentlemanly driving. And the term is without the slightest modification, either of pronunciation or meaning, directly and simply Gipsy, and is used by Gipsies in the same way. It has, however, in Rommany, as a primitive meaning—to hold, or to take. Thus I have heard of a feeble old fellow that “he could not tool himself togetherus”—for which last word, by the way, kettenus might have been more correctly substituted.
COVE is not an elegant, though a very old, word, but it is well known, and I have no doubt as to its having come from the Gipsy. In Rommany, all the world over, cova means “a thing,” but it is almost indefinite in its applicability. “It is,” says Pott, “a general helper on all occasions; is used as substantive and adjective, and has a far wider scope than the Latin res.” Thus covo may mean “that man;” covi, “that woman;” and covo or cuvvo, as it very often does in English, “that, there.” It sometimes appears in the word acovat, or this. There is no expression more frequent in a Gipsy’s mouth, and it is precisely the one which would be probably overheard by “Gorgios” and applied to persons. I believe that it first made its appearance in English slang as covey, and was then pronounced cúvvy, being subsequently abbreviated into cove.
Quite a little family of words has come into English from the Rommany, Hocben, huckaben, hokkeny, or hooker, all meaning a lie, or to lie, deception and humbug. Mr Borrow shows us that hocus, to “bewitch” liquor with an opiate, and hoax, are probably Rommany from this root, and I have no doubt that the expression, “Yes, with a hook,” meaning “it is false,” comes from the same. The well-known “Hookey” who corresponds so closely with his untruthful and disreputable pal “Walker,” is decidedly of the streets—gipsy. In German Gipsy we find chochavav and hochewawa, and in Roumanian Gipsy kokao—a lie. Hanky-panky and Hocus-pocus are each one half almost pure Hindustani. [{81}]
A SHINDY approaches so nearly in sound to the Gipsy word chingaree, which means precisely the same thing, that the suggestion is at least worth consideration. And it also greatly resembles chindi, which may be translated as “cutting up,” and also quarrel. “To cut up shindies” was the first form in which this extraordinary word reached the public. In the original Gipsy tongue the word to quarrel is chinger-av, meaning also (Pott, Zigeuner, p. 209) to cut, hew, and fight, while to cut is chinav. “Cutting up” is, if the reader reflects, a very unmeaning word as applied to outrageous or noisy pranks; but in Gipsy, whether English, German, or Oriental, it is perfectly sensible and logical, involving the idea of quarrelling, separating, dividing, cutting, and stabbing. What, indeed, could be more absurd than the expression “cutting up shines,” unless we attribute to shine its legitimate Gipsy meaning of a piece cut off, and its cognate meaning, a noise?
I can see but little reason for saying that a man cut away or that he shinned it, for run away, unless we have recourse to Gipsy, though I only offer this as a mere suggestion.