Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)
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First published 1952 (SND Vol. III). Includes material from the 2005 supplement.
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.
†EGYPTIAN, n. A gypsy. Also Egiptian (Sc. 1825 Jam.2), Egeptian and used attrib.Bnff. 1701 in W. Cramond Ann. Bnff. (1891) I. 112:
Application to be made “before the executione of these Egeptians to be execut the 2 Appryll nixt or any reprivall to be gott for them”.Lnk. 1711 J.P.s Lnk. (S.H.S. 1931) 117:
It shall be leisom to . . . imprison . . . the saids Egyptians, men and women, as common and notorious theives.Sc. 1715 in Hume Criminal Law (1797) II. 343:
The said pannels . . . going under the designation of Egyptians.Sc. 1815 Scott Guy M. vii.:
Two children were soundly flogged, and one Egyptian matron sent to the house of correction. Still, however, the gipsies made no motion to leave the spot which they had so long inhabited.Ags. 1891 J. M. Barrie Little Minister ix.:
Ay, an Egyptian. That's what the auld folk call a gypsy.Sc. 1893 Stevenson Catriona xxiii.:
And what have we been walking for all night, like a pair of waif Egyptians!Sc. 1993 Hamish Henderson in David Daiches The New Companion to Scottish Culture 327:
In the seventeeth century it was a capital crime in Scotland merely to be an 'Egyptian'-Egyptian, for the courts, meaning not merely a gypsy, but any sort of wanderer, vagabond minstrel or travelling tinsmith of no fixed abode.
