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 Walsch) 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.

“To make a MULL of anything,” meaning thereby to spoil or confuse it, if it be derived, as is said, from the Gipsy, must have come from Mullo meaning dead, and the Sanskrit Mara.  There is, however, no such Gipsy word as mull, in the sense of entangling or spoiling.

PROSS is a theatrical slang word, meaning to instruct and train a tyro.  As there are several stage words of manifest Gipsy origin, I am inclined to derive this from the old Gipsy Priss, to read.  In English Gipsy Prasser or Pross means to ridicule or scorn.  Something of this is implied in the slang word Pross, since it also means “to sponge upon a comrade,” &c., “for drink.”

TOSHERS are in English low language, “men who steal copper from ship’s bottoms.”  I cannot form any direct connection between this word and any in English Gipsy, but it is curious that in Turkish Gipsy Tasi is a cup, and in Turkish Persian it means, according to Paspati, a copper basin used in the baths.  It is as characteristic of English Gipsy as of any of its cognate dialects, that we often find lurking in it the most remarkable Oriental fragments, which cannot be directly traced through the regular line of transmission.

UP TO TRAP means, in common slang, intelligent.  It is worth observing, that in Gipsy, drab or trap (which words were pronounced alike by the first Gipsies who came from Germany to England), is used for medicine or poison, and the employment of the latter is regarded, even at the present, as the greatest Rommany secret.  Indeed, it is only a few days since a Gipsy said to me, “If you know drab, you’re up to everything; for there’s nothing goes above that.”  With drab the Gipsy secures game, fish, pigs, and poultry; he quiets kicking horses until they can be sold; and last, not least, kills or catches rats and mice.  As with the Indians of North America,