error_.

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