It should be observed that in no instance can these Gipsy words have been borrowed from English slang.  They are all to be found in German Gipsy, which is in its turn identical with the Rommany language of India—­of the Nats, Bhazeghurs, Doms, Multanee or Banjoree, as I find the primitive wandering Gipsies termed by different writers.

I am aware that the word CAD was applied to the conductor of an omnibus, or to a non-student at Universities, before it became a synonym for vulgar fellow, yet I believe that it was abbreviated from cadger, and that this is simply the Gipsy word Gorgio, which often means a man in the abstract.  I have seen this word printed as gorger in English slang.  CODGER, which is common, is applied, as Gipsies use the term Gorgio, contemptuously, and it sounds still more like it.

BOSH, signifying nothing, or in fact empty humbug, is generally credited to the Turkish language, but I can see no reason for going to the Turks for what the Gipsies at home already had, in all probability, from the same Persian source, or else from the Sanskrit.  With the Gipsies, bosh is a fiddle, music, noise, barking, and very often an idle sound or nonsense.  “Stop your bosherin,” or “your bosh,” is what they would term flickin lav, or current phrase.

“BATS,” a low term for a pair of boots, especially bad ones, is, I think, from the Gipsy and Hindustani pat, a foot, generally called, however, by the Rommany in England, Tom Pats.  “To pad the hoof,” and “to stand pad “—­the latter phrase meaning to stand upright, or to stand and beg, are probably derived from pat.  It should be borne in mind that Gipsies, in all countries, are in the habit of changing certain letters, so that p and b, like l and n, or k and g hard, may often be regarded as identical.

“CHEE-CHEE,” “be silent!” or “fie,” is termed “Anglo-Indian,” by the author of the Slang Dictionary, but we need not go to India of the present day for a term which is familiar to every Gipsy and “traveller” in England, and which, as Mr Simson discovered long ago, is an excellent “spell” to discourage the advances of thimble-riggers and similar gentry, at fairs, or in public places.

CHEESE, or “THE CHEESE,” meaning that anything is pre-eminent or superior; in fact, “the thing,” is supposed by many to be of gipsy origin because Gipsies use it, and it is to be found as “chiz” in Hindustani, in which language it means a thing.  Gipsies do not, however, seem to regard it themselves, as tacho or true Rommanis, despite this testimony, and I am inclined to think that it partly originated in some wag’s perversion of the French word chose.

In London, a man who sells cutlery in the streets is called a CHIVE FENCER, a term evidently derived from the Gipsy chiv, a sharp-pointed instrument or knife.  A knife is also called a chiv by the lowest class all over England.