gippo

English

An alteration of gypsy, which is in turn an alteration of Egyptian.

gippo (countable and uncountable, plural gippos or gippoes)

(British, offensive, slang) A Gypsy.
(British, offensive, slang, rare) An Egyptian.
- 1977, Olivia Manning, chapter 1, in The Danger Tree:
  Every foreigner in Cairo’s piling into the trains[.] The gyppo porters are having a high old time at the station.
(British, military, slang, uncountable) Gravy.
- 2006, George H. Coward, Coward's War:
  He had his “dinner” in his canteen and placed it on the ground to go and “scrounge” a chunk of bread to help “fill up”, and as soon as he turned his back a dog walked in at the door of the barn, where we were “in residence” as they say “higher up”, [only we “flew no flag”], and started lapping up some of the “gippo”, [gravy] of which the said dinner was composed [in fact 'twas more “gippo” than dinner that day, so who could blame a dog for being mistaken].
- 2006, Mildred Joan Tulip, My experiences as a VAD nurse:
  They were always asking for ‘more gippo’ (gravy) which we got for them if we could.
Ellipsis of gyppo logger.
- 1923, Edward B Mittelman, “The Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen: An Experiment in Industrial Relations”, in Journal of Political Economy‎^[1], volume 31, number 3, page 316:
  But even where the company does its own logging, the size of the timber enables it to use a modified form of the contract system, somewhat analogous to the sweatshop system in other industries and sinisterly named by the I.W.W., the "gyppo" system.

Gypsy — see Gypsy

Egyptian — see Egyptian

(gypsy; Egyptian): Tony Thorne (2014) “gippo”, in Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, 4th edition, London, […]: Bloomsbury