List of English words of Romani origin information
These are words in the English language which potentially come from Romani.
This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (May 2013)
chav (wikt:chav) – an anti-social youth (from chavi "child")[1][2]
cosh (wikt:cosh) – a weapon, truncheon, baton (from košter "stick")
cove (wikt:cove) – British-English colloquial term meaning a person or chap (from kova "that person")
dick (wikt:dick) – detective (potentially from dik "look", "see" and by extension "watch")[3]
gadjo (masc) or gadji (fem) – a non-Romani
nark (wikt:nark) – a police informer (from nāk "nose")
pal (wikt:pal) – friend (from phral "brother")
posh (wikt:posh) – fancy, upper-class (possibly from a Romani term for money)
Romanipen – the spirit of being Romani, "Romani-ness"
shiv (wikt:shiv) – an improvised knife or similar weapon (from chivomengro "knife")[4]
wonga (wikt:wonga) – Cockney slang for money (from angar "coal")[5]
^"UK | 'Asbo' and 'chav' make dictionary". BBC News. 8 June 2005. Archived from the original on 10 November 2005. Retrieved 2022-04-07.
^Quinion, Michael. "Chav". World Wide Words. Archived from the original on 15 April 2006. Retrieved 2022-04-07.
^Morris, Evan (2004-09-03). "Issue of September 3, 2004". The Word Detective. Retrieved 2022-04-07. They trace the noun "dick" in the "detective" sense to the 19th century (around 1864) criminal underworld slang verb "to dick," meaning "to watch." This "dick" came in turn from the Romany (the language of the Gypsies) word "dik," meaning "to look, to see."
^Johns Hopkins University; JSTOR (Organization) (1934). Modern Language Notes. Vol. 49. Johns Hopkins Press. p. 99. Retrieved 2022-04-07.
^Morris, Evan (2004-09-03). "Issue of September 3, 2004". The Word Detective. Retrieved 2022-04-07. ..."wonga" is British slang for "money," drawn from the word for "coal" in Romany, the language of the Gypsies, possibly from the practice of Gypsies collecting coal fallen from passing trains.
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