&c. (Brice, Hind. Dic.) _Niggle_ is one of the English Gipsy words
which are used in the East, but which I have not been able to find in the
German Rommany, proving that here, as in other countries, certain old
forms have been preserved, though they have been lost where the
vocabulary is far more copious, and the grammar much more perfect.

MUG, a face, is derived by Mr Wedgwood from the Italian MOCCA, a mocking
or apish mouth (Dictionary of English Etymology), but in English Gipsy we
have not only _mui_, meaning the face, but the _older_ forms from which
the English word was probably taken, such as Mak'h (Paspati), and finally
the Hindustani _Mook_ and the Sanskrit _Mukha_, mouth or face
(Shakespeare, Hind. Dic., p. 745). In all cases where a word is so
"slangy" as mug, it seems more likely that it should have been derived
from Rommany than from Italian, since it is only within a few years that
any considerable number of the words of the latter language was imparted
to the lower classes of London.

BAMBOOZLE, BITE, and SLANG are all declared by the author of the Slang
Dictionary to be Gipsy, but, with the exception of the last word, I am
unable to verify their Rommany origin. Bambhorna does indeed mean in
Hindustani (Brice), "to bite or to worry," and bamboo-bakshish to deceive
by paying with a whipping, while _swang_, as signifying mimicking,
acting, disguise and sham, whether of words or deeds, very curiously
conveys the spirit of the word slang. As for _bite_ I almost hesitate to
suggest the possibility of a connection between it and _Bidorna_, to
laugh at. I offer not only these three suggested derivations, but also
most of the others, with every reservation. For many of these words, as
for instance _bite_, etymologists have already suggested far more
plausible and more probable derivations, and if I have found a place for
Rommany "roots," it is simply because what is the most plausible, and
apparently the most probable, is not always the true origin. But as I
firmly believe that there is much more Gipsy in English, especially in
English slang and cant, than the world is aware of, I think it advisable
to suggest what I can, leaving to abler philologists the task of testing
its value.

Writers on such subjects err, almost without an exception, in insisting
on one accurately defined and singly derived source for every word, when
perhaps three or four have combined to form it. The habits of thought
and me