French

Noun

gadjo m ‎(plural gadjé, feminine gadji)

1. non-Romani person

See also

• payo (Spanish)

References

• “gadjo” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

1. ↑ , The Role of the Romanies: Images and Counter-images of 'Gypsies'/Romanies in European Cultures (2005), edited by Nicholas Saul, Susan Tebbutt; it says that Hancock speculated that gadjo "comes from an old Indian word gajjha, meaning 'civilian' or 'non-military person'", but the authors of The Role of the Romanies say "this is inaccurate, to say the least. There is no Old Indian word gajjha meaning 'civilian'. The attested form is the Old Indo-Aryan word garhya meaning 'domestic', from which Pischel (1900) hypothesized an unattested Middle Indian sound form *gajjha, which could have developed into the Romani word gadjo."