STURABAN, a prison, is purely Gipsy. Mr Hotten says it is from the Gipsy distarabin, but there is no such word beginning with dis, in the English Rommany dialect. In German Gipsy a prison is called stillapenn.
TINY or TEENY has been derived from the Gipsy tāno, meaning “little.”
TOFFER, a woman who is well dressed in new clean clothes, probably gets the name from the Gipsy tove, to wash (German Gipsy Tovava). She is, so to speak, freshly washed. To this class belong Toff, a dandy; Tofficky, dressy or gay, and Toft, a dandy or swell.
TOOL as applied to stealing, picking pockets, and burglary, is, like tool, to drive with the reins; derived beyond doubt from the Gipsy word tool, to take or hold. In all the Continental Rommany dialects it is Tulliwawa.
PUNCH, it is generally thought, is Anglo-Indian, derived directly from the Hindustani Pantch or five, from the five ingredients which enter into its composition, but it may have partially got its name from some sporting Gipsy in whose language the word for five is the same as in Sanskrit. There have been thousands of “swell” Rommany chals who have moved in sporting circles of a higher class than they are to be found in at the present day.
“VARDO formerly was Old Cant for a waggon” (The Slang Dictionary). It may be added that it is pure Gipsy, and is still known at the present day to every Rom in England. In Turkish Gipsy, Vordon means a vehicle, in German Gipsy, Wortin.
“Can you VOKER Rommany?” is given by Mr Hotten as meaning “Can you speak Gipsy,”—but there is no such word in Rommany as voker. He probably meant “Can you rākker”—pronounced very often Roker. Continental Gipsy Rakkervava. Mr Hotten derives it from the Latin Vocare!
I do not know the origin of WELCHER, a betting cheat, but it is worthy of remark that in old Gipsy a Walshdo or Welsher meant a Frenchman (from the German Wälsch) or any foreigner of the Latin races.
YACK, a watch, probably received its name from the Gipsy Yak an eye, in the old times when watches were called bull’s eyes.
LUSHY, to be tipsy, and LUSH, are attributed for their origin to the name of Lushington, a once well-known London brewer, but when we find Losho and Loshano in a Gipsy dialect, meaning jolly, from such a Sanskrit root as Lush; as Paspati derives it, there seems to be some ground for supposing the words to be purely Rommany. Dr Johnson said of lush that it was “opposite to pale,” and this curiously enough shows its first source, whether as a “slang” word or as indicative of colour, since one of its early Sanskrit meanings is light or radiance. This identity of the so regarded vulgar and the refined, continually confronts us in studying Rommany.