A gilpin is a term for "sucker" or "
chump" that dates from as
early as the 1910s but rarely appears in the modern century. Consider this
line from
1) James Cagney's taxi driver
friend in THE ROARING TWENTIES (1939): "To Long
Island it's fifteen dollars for the wise
guys, 30 dollars for the gilpins."
2) Cagney, upon realizing he was naive, says, "I was a such a gilpin."