4/26/19 For the PC people:

I was recently informed (4/9/19) that the word “gypsy” was offensive and racial and that I should consider changing the name of the pattern. They did not provide any source for this information.

I just got off the phone with a girlfriend who had a knitting question and is also a lawyer. She had a much stronger reaction to this request and since I have heard this before, I will only relay the highlights: that political correctness is a slippery slope and where it will end (?) because these words are also in books and then she followed through with book burnings and Nazi Germany. (And we all know how that went for everybody.) She also said this infringed upon my 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech which included intentional, offensive language.

Personally, I am more middle of the road and certainly never intended any offense. So I opened all the dictionaries in the house and a couple online. My father, a professor who petitioned to allow blacks to attend the college he taught at, instilled in me to “look it up”.

NONE of the dictionary sources deem the word “gypsy” as “derogatory” or “offensive”. Which is in my defense, exactly how I intended it. I checked a couple of online sources in the event that my dictionaries are outdated. Again, nothing.

Besides a particular heritage, other meanings describe people of no particular ethnic culture but “lead an unconventional life” and a “person who moves place to place as required by employment”, “a nomadic or free-spirited person”, and as an adjective, “(of a business or business person) nonunion or unlicensed”. The word has been around since 1537 as a “shortening and alteration from Egyptian”.

Since I cannot find anything to support an offensive connotation, I am not changing it.

Sources:

At home,
1) The Oxford American College Dictionary
2) Webster’s New Encyclopedic Dictionary
3) Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary
4) Webster’s Tenth New Collegiate Dictionary

Online,
5) Dictionary.com
2) Merriam-Webster Dictionary android app Version 4.3.3