gypsy
/ˈd͡ʒɪp.si/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.55 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An itinerant person or any person, not necessarily Romani; a tinker, a traveller or a carny.
Colloquial
noun
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). (Compare whole gyp, half gyp, and gypsy meltdown, in which this step precedes a swing.)
Offensive
noun
A member of a Broadway musical chorus line.
Example Sentences
- "Like a right gypsy, hath, at fast and loose, Beguiled me to the very heart of loss."
- "It was at this town of Badajoz, the capital of Estremadura, that I first fell in with those singular people, the Zincali, Gitanos, or Spanish gypsies."
- "He championed the music of the gypsies as he did the Muslim and Jewish roots of Spanish culture. […] All these and more were fused in the forge of the gypsy experience into a singular art form, unlike any of its sources, evoking its own worldview, its own existential stance."
- "The rest of the day is spent out of doors "Gypsying", and families greatly enjoy themselves on these occasions."
- "Look at the person you're gypsying with, and convey the message that you notice them as a person and that you're glad that they're there, […]"
- "The only one I know of is The Tease by Tom Hinds which starts with the actives gypsying and then swinging their neighbors and ends with contra […]"
Etymology
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: Egipcian, egyptien, aegyptianus
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈd͡ʒɪp.si/
- British English: /ˈd͡ʒɪp.si/