Pedlarsʹ French

The slang of the Romany folk. Even Bracton uses the word Frenchman as a synonym of foreigner, and it is not long since that everyone who could not speak English was called a Frenchman. The Jews, with a similar width, used the word Greek.

“Instead of Pedlars French, gives him plain language.”—Beaumont and Fletcher: Faithful Friends, i. 2.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.