Gypsy

Gypsy (pronounced jip-see)

(1) A once common term for the Roma or Romani but now largely socially proscribed as disparaging and offensive (sometimes with initial capital letter).  The Roma or Romani are scattered throughout Europe and North America and often maintain a nomadic way of life even in urbanized, industrialized societies, their source apparently a wave of migration from north-west India from around the ninth century onwards.

(2) The Indic language of the Roma or Romani although not in formal academic or technical use (always with initial capital letter).

(3) A person held to resemble a Roma or Romani, especially in physical characteristics (notably the combination of darker skin and dark, curly hair) or in a traditionally ascribed lifestyle and inclination to move from place to place.

(4) Of or relating to the Roma or Romani (can be used neutrally but is often applied as a disparaging and offensive slur).

(5) In informal use, working independently or without a license; a vagrant; an itinerant person or any person, not necessarily Romani; a tinker, a traveller; a circus or carnival performer; any itinerant person, or any person suspected of making a living from dishonest practices or theft.

(6) In informal use, free-spirited (though distinct from “bohemian” which implies something more sophisticated).

(7) In informal use, a sly, roguish woman.

(8) In informal use, a fortune teller (now rare).

(9) A move in contra dancing in which two dancers walk in a circle around each other while maintaining eye contact (but not touching as in a swing), the variations including the whole gyp, the half gyp, and the gypsy meltdown (in which this step precedes a swing); out of context the terms can be disparaging and offensive.

(10) In theater, a member of a Broadway musical chorus line.

1505–1515: A back formation from gipcyan, a Middle English dialectal form of egypcien (Egyptian) which over centuries lost the unstressed initial syllable), adopted in this context because of the mistaken perception Gypsies came originally from Egypt.  It was used as an adjective since the 1620s (with the sense "unconventional; outdoor) and the modern (and now archaic) UK word gippy was in use by at least 1889 as a truncated colloquial form of “Egyptian” although gip & gyp as abbreviations of gipsy & gypsy were known since the 1840s, the related verbs being gipped & gipping.  It was cognate with the Spanish Gitano and close in sense to the Turkish & Arabic Kipti (gypsy) although the literal meaning of that was “Coptic” (the form of Christianity most common in Egypt).  In Middle French the closest term was Bohémien (although that tended to be a geographical reference without the same associations familiar from modern use), the Spanish also using Flamenco (from Flanders) in the same way.  Those adoptions of use do hint at the manner in which the Roma have so often been treated as “outsiders”, “outlanders” or “foreigners” in just about any country where they were found although the nuances of “gypsy” were very different to notions such as “rootless cosmopolitans” which were attached to the Jews.  The alternative spellings were gipsy, gipsey, gypsey, gypsie & gyptian, all of which except gipsy are thought archaic.

In his A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), Henry Fowler (1858–1933) noted the special significance of Gypsy (rather than gipsy) being the preferred spelling in English, a development not related to the practice imposed on other words (tyre, syphon et al) where a ‘y’ was substituted for an ‘I’ for no better reason than the effect was thought decorative.  Henry Fowler thought it helpful because it existed as a relic to remind those concerned that the original meaning was “Egyptian” but noted also the Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED) statement that (in the early twentieth century) the preferred spelling appeared to be gipsy by the plural form gypsies was far from uncommon, presumably because users found awkward the “…appearance and repetition of ‘y’”.  Gypsy is a noun, verb & adjective; gypsydom, gypsyhood & gypsyism are nouns, gypsying & gypsied are verbs and gypsyesque, gypsyish, gypsy-like & gypseian are adjectives; the noun plural is gypsies.

Noted traveller Lindsay Lohan, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), 2009.

The terms "Gypsy", "Roma", "Traveller" and "Romani" are often used interchangeably, but there are differences.  Gypsy is a term that historically referred to the Romani people, who are believed to have originated in the Indian subcontinent and migrated to Europe and other parts of the world over many centuries but it’s usually now thought a derogatory slur because of the history of use in stereotyping and discriminating against Romani people.  Roma is now the preferred term for the Romani people, and it is often used to refer to the ethnic group as a whole.  Romani is an adjective that refers to anything related to the Roma people, such as Romani culture or the Romani language.  It is used also as a noun to refer to an individual member of the Roma people.  Traveller is a term used to describe various groups of people who live a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle, including the Roma people. However, there are other groups of people who are also considered Travellers, such as the Irish Travellers in Ireland and the UK.

Lymantria dispar: The moth formerly known as gypsy (their appearance is subject to wide variations between regions).  

TheAwareness of the sense shift of “gypsy” from something purely descriptive to a racial slur has also had consequences in zoology.  In 2021, the Entomological Society of America (ESA) announced it was removing “gypsy moth” and “gypsy ant” as the sanctioned common names for two insects.  The link between the insects and the slur is not as remote as some may suspect because as Romani scholar Professor Ethel Brooks noted, the common name of the species Lymantria dispar was gained from the behavior of the hairy larvae of the caterpillar stage during which the larvae would swarm and strip the leaves from a tree, leaving behind so much destruction that they were habitually referred to as “a plague”.  Tellingly, nobody ever cursed the Lymantria dispar but all blamed the “gypsy moth caterpillars”.  Dr Brooks made the connection between peoples’ view of the ravenous bugs and her own experience of the way the Roma were often disparaged.  She however confessed to being surprised her advocacy for change succeeded with the entomologists although the ESA was aware the Lymantria dispar’s common name was derogatory and had received a request for change as early as 2020, forming a Better Common Names Project, a task force to review and replace offensive or inappropriate insect common names.

Other branches of science are also acting.  The American Ornithological Society in 2020 announced the formation of an ad hoc committee to look into nomenclatures, some of the more obvious changes being the replacement of bird-names based on the names of people with dubious histories in colonialism or slavery.  In genetics, there’s also a move to rename the “Gypsy jumping genes”, a class noted for their propensity to make copies of themselves and insert them back into the genome.   In genetics, such revisions are not unknown; some years ago a number of genes were renamed because their original names, thought whimsical at the time, were held to be offensive to those with certain physical characteristics or suffering some forms of mental illness.  In ichthyology, attention is also being paid to names.  The Atlantic goliath grouper was historically referred to as the "jewfish" and while the origin of the name is obscure, a review determined it was likely the species' physical characteristics were connected habitually deployed caricatures of anti-Semitic beliefs and as long ago as 1927, the New York Aquarium changed the fish's name to Junefish.  In 2001, the American Fisheries Society (AFS) changed the name to "goliath grouper".

South African de Havilland DH.60G Gipsy Moth c/n 842 ZS-ABA, registered to The Johannesburg Light Plane Club At Baragwanath Airfield and pictured with Junkers A50 Junior ZS-ABV c/n 3511 and Avro 594 Avian II ZS-AAN c/n 124

The de Havilland Gipsy aero-engine enjoyed a very long life.  First produced in 1927, it was used in an extraordinary number of airframes, most famously de Havilland’s Gipsy Moth and Tiger Moth.  The last variant, the Gipsy Queen 70, left the assembly line almost thirty years after the first.

Stanton Special in its original 1953 hill climb form (left) and as re-configured in 1954 with a Weltex Mistral body for land speed record competition (right).    

One curious footnote in the long career of the Gipsy engine was its use in the 1953 Stanton Special, a New Zealand built race-car.  Although not a classic racing-car power-plant, the Gipsy was light, reliable and produced a lot of torque over a wide power-band, making it ideal for the hill-climbs for which it was intended.  A product typical of the practical improvisation which characterized so much of the early motor-sport scene in New Zealand, the engine was salvaged from a Tiger Moth used for aerial-spraying and the Stanton Special quickly was dubbed “the cropduster”, the aero-engine’s distinctive exhaust note meaning it was never mistaken for anything else.  So effective did it proved in hill climbs it attracted comments suggesting that were something done to improve its dubious aerodynamic properties, it might enjoy some success in events where speeds were higher.  Accordingly, Christchurch-based Weltex Plastics, one of the pioneers in the production of fibreglass structures, in 1954 furnished one of its Mistral bodies (a design produced under license from the UK’s Microplas), complete with a tail fin to enhance straight-line stability (a la that year’s Jaguar D-Type at Le Mans).  Thus configured and with the engine tuned further with the addition of an Abbott supercharger & four Amal carburetors, it was entered in some national land speed contests and won convincingly, managing an elapsed time of 12.96 seconds in the standing quarter-mile (400 m) and a flying quarter at 154 mph (248 km/h).  The tweaking continued and in 1958 it set an Australasian land speed record which would stand for ten years, covering the standing kilometre in 22.95 seconds with a terminal velocity of 175 mph (281 km/h).  The aerodynamics must have been good but remarkably no wind-tunnel time was part of the design process, the stylist apparently sketching something which “looked slippery”.