A large proportion of the vocabulary of argot is to be traced to the early Romance idiom, or to some of our country patois, the offsprings of the ancient Langue d’oc and Langue d’oil. Some of the terms draw their origin from the Italian language and jargon, and were imported by Italian quacks and sharpers. Such are lime (_shirt_), fourline (_thief_), macaronner (_to inform against_), rabouin (_devil_), rif (_fire_), escarpe (_thief_, _murderer_), respectively from lima, forlano, macaronare, rabuino, ruffo, scarpa, some of which belong to the Romany, as lima. The German schlafen has given schloffer, and the Latin fur has provided us with the verb affurer. Several are of Greek parentage: arton (_bread_), from the accusative αρτον; ornie (_fowl_), from ορνις; pier (_to drink_), piolle (_tavern_), pion (_drunk_), from πιεῖν. The word argot itself, formerly a cant word, but which has now gained admittance into the _Dictionnaire de l’Académie_, is but the corruption of jargon, called by the Italians “lingua gerga,” abbreviated into “gergo,” from which the French word sprang,--gergo itself being derived, according to Salvini, from the Greek ἱερός (_sacred_). Hence lingua gerga, _sacred language_, only known to the initiated. M. Génin thus traces the origin of argot: lingua hiera, then lingua gerga, il gergo; hence jergon or jargon, finally argot. Other philologists have suggested that it comes from the Greek ἀργός, idler; and this learned derivation is not improbable, as, among the members of the “argot”--originally the corporation of pedlars and vagabonds--were scholars like Villon (though there exists no evidence of the word having been used in his time), and runaway priests who had, as the French say, “thrown the cassock to the nettles.” M. Nisard, however, rejects these derivations, and believes that argot comes from _argutus_, pointed, cunning. It seems, in any case, an indubitable fact that the term argot at first was applied only to the confraternity of vagabonds or “argotiers,” and there is no evidence of its having been used before 1698 as an appellation for their language, which till then had been known as “jargon du matois” or “jargon de l’argot.” Grandval, in his _Vice puni ou Cartouche_, offers the following derivation, which must be taken for what it is worth.