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 cuvvy, 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}