Infante. Span. and Port. Prince.
Inglaterra. Span. England.
Ingles. Span. English. Inglesito! “My little Englishman!”
Inquisicion. Span. The Inquisition.
Inshallah. Arab. Please God!
Instancia. Span. and Port. Instance, prosecution. See note, ii. 141.
Jabador. Apparently a Hispanized form of the African Arabic jabdali = a gold-embroidered waistcoat.
Jaca, or Haca. Span. A pony, or small riding horse.
Jara Canallis. Rom. The only authority I have succeeded in finding for this word is Z. ii. * 61. “Jaracañales, guards, officers of the revenue.” It may possibly be derived from the Bohemian gypsy xáro, Hungarian háro = sabre, and the Span. canalla, but I have no reason to suppose that the word xáro or háro was known to the gypsies of Spain.
Jargon. Eng. Originally a Fr. word, meaning any unintelligible sound, as that of birds, then applied to the strange speech of the Gueux; and so to any unknown tongue. Borrow himself says of the gypsies, “when wishing to praise the proficiency of any individual in their tongue, they are in the habit of saying, ‘He understands the seven jargons’” (Z. ii. 125). Frampton Boswell is recorded (G. i. 374) to have stated that Romany was not one of “the seven languages,” “but,” adds Mr. Hinde Groome, “what he meant thereby, goodness alone knows.” The historian Mazaris (a.d. 1416) states that at that time the Peloponnesus was inhabited by seven principal nations, one of which was that of the Egyptians. These “Egyptians” are held by M. Bataillard to have been gypsies (ib. iii. 154), and I would suggest that we have here the origin of “the seven jargons.” The number seven seems to be in a special way connected with the children of Roma. For other instances see Leland, English Gypsies, p. 218; Gr. 171.