gypsy

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A person who travels from place to place rather than living in one fixed home.

   He lived like a gypsy, moving to a new city every few months.

2. 2
   verb

   To wander or roam from place to place.

   After college they gypsied around Europe for a year with nothing but backpacks.

A clipping of Gyptian (in Early Modern English roughly /ˈd͡ʒɪp.sɪ.æn/), itself an apheretic form of Egyptian, from Middle English Egipcian (“Egyptian”) (rarely Gypcian), from Old French egyptien, from Latin aegyptianus, from aegyptius (“Egypt”), because when Roma first appeared in England in the sixteenth century, they were wrongly believed to have come from Egypt. The Albanian evgjit, Greek γύφτος (gýftos), Italian gitano, Spanish gitano and Turkish Kıpti have the same origin. Doublet of Egyptian and Copt. The other major categories of words for the Roma are cognates of Rom (words related to…

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