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.

COUTER or COOTER is a common English slang term for a guinea. It was not
necessary for the author of the Slang Dictionary to go to the banks of
the Danube for the origin of a word which is in the mouths of all English
Gipsies, and which was brought to England by their ancestors. A
sovereign, a pound, in Gipsy, is a _bar_.

A GORGER, meaning a gentleman, or well-dressed man, and in theatrical
parlance, a manager, is derived by the author of the Slang
Dictionary--absurdly enough, it must be confessed--from "gorgeous,"--a
word with which it has no more in common than with gouges or chisels. A
gorger or gorgio--the two are often confounded--is the common Gipsy word
for one who is not Gipsy, and very often means with them a _rye_ or
gentleman, and indeed any man whatever. Actors sometimes call a fellow-
performer a _cully-gorger_.

DICK, an English slang word for sight, or seeing, is purely Gipsy in its
origin, and in common use by Rommanis over all the world.

DOOK, to tell fortunes, and DOOKING, fortune-telling, are derived by the
writer last cited, correctly enough, from the Gipsy _dukkerin_,--a fact
which I specify, since it is one of the very rare instances in which he
has not blundered when commenting on Rommany words, or other persons'
works.

Mr Borrow has told us that a TANNER or sixpence, sometimes called a
Downer, owes its pseudonym to the Gipsy word _tawno_ or _tano_, meaning
"little"--the sixpence being the little coin as compared with a shilling.

DRUM or DROM, is the common English Gipsy word for a road. In English
slang it is applied, not only to highways, but also to houses.

If the word GIBBERISH was, as has been asserted, first applied to the
language of the Gipsies, it may have been derived either from "Gip," the
nickname for Gipsy, with _ish_ or _rish_ appended as in Engl-_ish_, I-
_rish_, or from the Rommany word _Jib_ signifying a language.

KEN, a low term for a house, is possibly of Gipsy origin. The common
word in every Rommany dialect for a house is, how