| English Dictionary |
GIPSY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
• GIPSY (noun)
The noun GIPSY has 3 senses:
1. a laborer who moves from place to place as demanded by employment
2. a member of a people with dark skin and hair who speak Romany and who traditionally live by seasonal work and fortunetelling; they are believed to have originated in northern India but now are living on all continents (but mostly in Europe, North Africa, and North America)
3. a person who resembles a Gypsy in leading an unconventional, nomadic way of life
Familiarity information: GIPSY used as a noun is uncommon.
Sense 1
Meaning:
A laborer who moves from place to place as demanded by employment
Classified under:
Nouns denoting people
Synonyms:
Context example:
itinerant traders
Hypernyms ("gipsy" is a kind of...):
jack; laborer; labourer; manual laborer (someone who works with their hands; someone engaged in manual labor)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "gipsy"):
swagger; swaggie; swagman (an itinerant Australian laborer who carries his personal belongings in a bundle as he travels around in search of work)
tinker (formerly a person (traditionally a Gypsy) who traveled from place to place mending pots and kettles and other metal utensils as a way to earn a living)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A member of a people with dark skin and hair who speak Romany and who traditionally live by seasonal work and fortunetelling; they are believed to have originated in northern India but now are living on all continents (but mostly in Europe, North Africa, and North America)
Classified under:
Nouns denoting people
Synonyms:
Bohemian; Gipsy; Gypsy; Roma; Romani; Romany; Rommany
Hypernyms ("Gipsy" is a kind of...):
Indian (a native or inhabitant of India)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "Gipsy"):
gitana (a Spanish female Gypsy)
gitano (a Spanish male Gypsy)
Sense 3
Meaning:
A person who resembles a Gypsy in leading an unconventional, nomadic way of life
Classified under:
Nouns denoting people
Synonyms:
gipsy; gypsy
Hypernyms ("gipsy" is a kind of...):
individual; mortal; person; somebody; someone; soul (a human being)
Context examples
I felt now as composed as ever I did in my life: there was nothing indeed in the gipsy's appearance to trouble one's calm.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
It must be those wretched gipsies in the plantation.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
It's a capital little gipsy sort of place.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
These Szgany are gipsies; I have notes of them in my book.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
The police have really done nothing locally, save the arrest of these gipsies.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The gipsies did not wait for the operations of justice; they took themselves off in a hurry.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
He was but sixteen, with his gristle not yet all set into bone, when he fought and beat Gipsy Lee, of Burgess Hill, who called himself the “Cock of the South Downs.”
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Right below it there was an exceedingly small hollow of green turf, hidden by banks and a thick underwood about knee-deep, that grew there very plentifully; and in the centre of the dell, sure enough, a little tent of goat-skins, like what the gipsies carry about with them in England.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
Were there gipsies in the plantation at the time?
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I have seen a gipsy vagabond; she has practised in hackneyed fashion the science of palmistry and told me what such people usually tell.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
| Learn English with... Proverbs |
"«He who teaches himself hath a fool for a teacher», but he who does not teach himself has no teachers at all." (Christopher Berkeley)
"Luck in the sky and brains in the ground." (Arabic proverb)
"Even the king saves his money." (Corsican proverb)