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NOTES AND QUERIES
David Lopes, in his Expansão da lingua portuguesa nos séculos XVI, XVII e XVIII, showed that a pidginized Portuguese was the Europeans' lingua franca in the East up to the nineteenth century. This may have been the jargon from which the English sailors found their lingo and taught it to the low life of English sea ports. If this is so, it may have entered one level of our language at approximately the same time as savvy, probably Portuguese sabe, though the OED says Spanish, and Partridge (Origins) says Sabir; dodo, Portuguese doudo: OED, 1628 E. ALTHAM Lett. to Sir Edw. Altham "18 June in the Iland Mauritius, called by ye Portingalls a DoDo... P.S. Of Mr. Perce you shall receue a iarr of giner... and a bird called a DoDo, if it lives"; pickaninny Portuguese pequenino: OED 1657 R. LIGON Barbadoes, 48 "When the child is borne (which she calls her Pickaninnie) she (a neighbour) helps to make a little fire neve her feet... In a fortnight, this woman is at work with her Pickaninny at her back."
But even if lingo did enter English cant from Sabir, it would be likely that it was later reinforced by a similar form in sailor's Portuguese. The same could be said, of course, of savvy.
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ROBERT WALLACE THOMPSON,