Word: jinni
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...fragments of obscure Indian tribes, having wandered across Asia and Europe, turned up in Britain. Englishmen thought the swarthy nomads were Egyptians, shortened the word to gypsies. Gypsies did not mind. To them all gorgios (nongypsies) were boro dinellos (big fools) to be tricked and preyed on by the jinni Romanis (clever gypsies). Except for the contacts inevitable in dukkering (fortunetelling), dooking gri (casting a spell on horses to lower their value and price) or drabbing baulor (poisoning a farmer's pigs so that the gypsies could buy the carcasses cheaply for food), gypsies wanted no part...
...speaking pensively between sips of soup: "What is war? Who is the enemy? What is he? We can only grasp at the shape of the antagonist before us, and then when you think you've solved the mystery of his personality, he vanishes into thin air like a jinni. . . . What makes me cross is that by evening he knows exactly where we are, but we don't know where he is 'or what...
...Agricultural Marketing Administration is drowning in evaporated milk like the sorcerer's apprentice who could not stop the jinni from bringing in more water...