“Applico” to shindy we have the word ROW, meaning nearly the same thing and as nearly Gipsy in every respect as can be. It is in Gipsy at the present day in England, correctly, rov, or roven—to cry—but v and w are so frequently transposed that we may consider them as the same letter. Rāw or me rauaw, “I howl” or “cry,” is German Gipsy. Rowan is given by Pott as equivalent to the Latin ululatus, which constituted a very respectable row as regards mere noise. “Rowdy” comes from “row” and both are very good Gipsy in their origin. In Hindustani Rao mut is “don’t cry!”
CHIVVY is a common English vulgar word, meaning to goad, drive, vex, hunt, or throw as it were here and there. It is purely Gipsy, and seems to have more than one root. Chiv, chib, or chipe, in Rommany, mean a tongue, inferring scolding, and chiv anything sharp-pointed, as for instance a dagger, or goad or knife. But the old Gipsy word chiv-av among its numerous meanings has exactly that of casting, throwing, pitching, and driving. To chiv in English Gipsy means as much and more than to fix in America, in fact, it is applied to almost any kind of action.
It may be remarked in this connection, that in German or continental Gipsy, which represents the English in a great measure as it once was, and which is far more perfect as to grammar, we find different words, which in English have become blended into one. Thus, chib or chiv, a tongue, and tschiwawa (or chiv-ava), to lay, place, lean, sow, sink, set upright, move, harness, cover up, are united in England into chiv, which embraces the whole. “Chiv it āpré” may be applied to throwing anything, to covering it up, to lifting it, to setting it, to pushing it, to circulating, and in fact to a very great number of similar verbs.
There is, I think, no rational connection between the BUNG of a barrel and an eye which has been closed by a blow. One might as well get the simile from a knot in a tree or a cork in a flask. But when we reflect on the constant mingling of Gipsies with prizefighters, it is almost evident that the word BONGO may have been the origin of it. A bongo yakko or yak, means a distorted, crooked, or, in fact, a bunged eye. It also means lame, crooked, or sinister, and by a very singular figure of speech, Bongo Tem or the Crooked Land is the name for hell. [{83}]
SHAVERS, as a quaint nick-name for children, is possibly inexplicable, unless we resort to Gipsy, where we find it used as directly as possible. Chavo is the Rommany word for child all the world over, and the English term chavies, in Scottish Gipsy shavies, or shavers, leaves us but little room for doubt. I am not aware to what extent the term “little shavers” is applied to children in England, but in America it is as common as any cant word can be.
I do not know the origin of the French word CLICHY, as applied to the noted prison of that name, but it is perhaps not undeserving the comment that in Continental Gipsy it means a key and a bolt.
I have been struck with the fact that CALIBAN, the monster in “The Tempest,” by Shakespeare, has an appellation which literally signifies blackness in Gipsy. In fact, this very word, or Cauliban, is given in one of the Gipsy vocabularies for “black.” Kaulopen or Kauloben would, however, be more correct.
“A regular RUM ’un” was the form in which the application of the word “rum” to strange, difficult, or distinguished, was first introduced to the British public. This, I honestly believe (as Mr Borrow indicates), came from Rum or Rom, a Gipsy. It is a peculiar word, and all of its peculiarities might well be assumed by the sporting Gipsy, who is always, in his way, a character, gifted with an indescribable self-confidence, as are all “horsey” men characters, “sports” and boxers, which enables them to keep to perfection the German eleventh commandment, “Thou shall not let thyself be bluffed!”—i.e., abashed.
PAL is a common cant word for brother or friend, and it is purely Gipsy, having come directly from that language, without the slightest change. On the Continent it is prala, or pral. In England it sometimes takes the form “pel.”
TRASH is derived by Mr Wedgwood (Dictionary of English Etymology, 1872) from the old word trousse, signifying the clipping of trees. But in old Gipsy or in the German Gipsy of the present day, as in the Turkish Rommany, it means so directly “fear, mental weakness and worthlessness,” that it may possibly have had a Rommany origin. Terror in Gipsy is trash, while thirst is trush, and both are to be found in the Hindustani. Tras, which means thirst and alarm or terror.