Rhyming slang is a form of slang word construction in the English language. It is especially prevalent among Cockneys in England, and was first used in the early 19th century in the East End of London; hence its alternative name, Cockney rhyming slang. In the United States, especially in the criminal underworld of the West Coast between 1880 and 1920, rhyming slang has sometimes been known as Australian slang.
The construction of rhyming slang involves replacing a common word with a phrase of two or more words, the last of which rhymes with the original word; then, in almost all cases, omitting, from the end of the phrase, the secondary rhyming word (which is thereafter implied), Bryson, a humourist, states that there is a special name given to this omission: "the word that rhymes is almost always dropped... There's a technical term for this process as well: hemiteleia". Given that this is a genus of plant species, and appears in no readily available sources as a linguistic term, it is unclear whether the humourist was being humorous, or informative. making the origin and meaning of the phrase elusive to listeners not in the know.
Examples The form of Cockney slang is made clear with the following example. The rhyming phrase apples and pears is used to mean . Following the pattern of omission, "and pears" is dropped, thus the spoken phrase "I'm going up the apples" means "I'm going up the stairs".
The following are further common examples of these phrases:
Slang word Meaning Original phrase Notes Adam and Eve Adam and Eve Aris This is the result of a double rhyme. Arse was rhymed with bottle and glass. Bottle was then rhymed with Aristotle and truncated to Aris. bird bird lime bottle bottle and glass Brahms Brahms and Liszt boracic (abbr: brassic) boracic lint Bristol Bristol City often pluralised as Bristols Britneys Britney Spears butcher's butcher's hook e.g. "Let's have a butcher's at that." china china plate dog dog and bone frog Frog and Toad Gary (ecstasy) Gary Ablett grass (police officer or informant) or (from cop-shop) grasshopper Gregory Gregory Peck e.g. "Stop breathing down my Gregory!" Hampsteads Hampstead Heath jam tart jam tart Khyber Khyber Pass loaf loaf of bread e.g. "Use your loaf!" mince mince pie Often pluralised as minces Ogden (slang for ) Ogden Nash pork (or porkie) pork pie e.g. "Have you been telling me porkies?" plaster This is the result of a triple rhyme. Arse was rhymed with bottle and glass. Bottle was then rhymed with Aristotle and truncated to Aris. Lastly, Aris was rhymed with plaster of Paris. plates plates of meat raspberry raspberry ripple raspberry raspberry tart See also: blowing a raspberry rub "Rub-a-dub-dub" septic (abbr: seppo) septic tank syrup syrup of figs threepenny threepenny bit Often pluralised as threepennys tit for (abbr: titfer) tit for tat Tom tomfoolery trouble trouble and strife treacle treacle tart Turkish Turkish bath weasel weasel and stoat whistle whistle and flute In some cases the meaning is further obscured by additional iterations of rhyme. For example, Aris and plaster are double and triple rhymes of respectively. First, arse was rhymed with bottle and glass, shortened to bottle. Next, bottle was rhymed with Aristotle and truncated to Aris. Thus Aris emerged as a double rhyme of . Aris was then itself further rhymed with plaster of Paris, producing plaster as a triple rhyme of .
Phonetic versus phono-semantic forms Ghil'ad Zuckermann, a linguist and revivalist, has proposed a distinction between rhyming slang based on sound only, and phono-semantic rhyming slang, which includes a semantic link between the slang expression and its referent (the thing it refers to). An example of rhyming slang based only on sound is the Cockney tea leaf . An example of phono-semantic rhyming slang is the Cockney sorrowful tale , in which case the person coining the slang term sees a semantic link, sometimes jocular, between the Cockney expression and its referent.
Mainstream usage The use of rhyming slang has spread beyond the purely dialectal and examples are to be found in the mainstream British English lexicon, although many users may be unaware of the origin of those words.
The expression "blowing a raspberry" comes from raspberry tart for . Berk, a mild pejorative widely used across the UK and not usually considered particularly offensive, although the origin lies in a contraction of "Berkeley Hunt", as the rhyme for the significantly more offensive .: "Origin: 1930s: abbreviation of Berkeley or Berkshire Hunt, rhyming slang for 'cunt'." "To have a butcher's" for , from butcher's hook.: "have (or take) a butcher's (informal) Have a look."
Most of the words changed by this process are nouns, but a few are adjectival, e.g., bales (of cotton) , or the adjectival phrase "on one's Tod" for , after Tod Sloan, a famous jockey.
History Rhyming slang is believed to have originated in the mid-19th century in the East End of London, with several sources suggesting some time in the 1840s. The Flash Dictionary, of unknown authorship, published in 1921 by Smeeton (48mo), contains a few rhymes. John Camden Hotten's 1859 Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words likewise states that it originated in the 1840s ("about twelve or fifteen years ago"), but with "chaunters" and "patterers" in the Seven Dials area of London. Hotten's Dictionary included the first known "Glossary of the Rhyming Slang", which included later mainstays such as frog and toad and apples and pears , as well as many more obscure examples, e.g. Battle of the Nile (a common term for a hat), Duke of York , and Top of Rome .
It remains a matter of speculation exactly how rhyming slang originated, for example, as a linguistic game among friends or as a cryptolect developed intentionally to confuse non-locals. If deliberate, it may also have been used to maintain a sense of community, or to allow traders to talk amongst themselves in marketplaces to facilitate collusion, without customers knowing what they were saying, or by criminals to confuse the police (see thieves' cant).
The academic, lexicographer and radio personality Terence Dolan has suggested that rhyming slang was invented by Irish immigrants to London "so the actual English wouldn't understand what they were talking about."
Development
Many examples of rhyming slang are based on locations in London, such as Peckham Rye, meaning , which dates from the late nineteenth century; Hampstead Heath, meaning (usually as Hampsteads), which was first recorded in 1887; and barnet (Barnet Fair), meaning , which dates from the 1850s.
In the 20th century, rhyming slang began to be based on the names of celebrities and pop culture references:
Pop culture reference Meaning Citation Andrea Corr, George Bernard Shaw, Roger Moore, or Rory O'Moore door Alan Whicker knickers Bob Marley "Charlie", a street name for cocaine Boutros Boutros-Ghali or Gianluca Vialli oats and barley Brady Bunch lunch Britney Spears beers or tears Bugs Bunny money Captain Kirk work Dan Dare, Lionel Blair, Rupert Bear, or Tony Blair flares D'Oyly Carte Father Ted dead Gregory Peck neck or cheque Hank Marvin starving Henry Hall balls Jimmy Riddle (as in urinate) Jodrell Bank, J. Arthur Rank, or Sherman tank Kurt Cobain cocaine Max Miller pillow (pronounced ) Meryl Streep cheap Mickey Mouse Scouse Mona Lisa pizza Nat King Cole "the dole" Niki Lauda "powder", a street name for cocaine Patsy Cline "line", a street name for cocaine "Pop Goes the Weasel" diesel Puff Daddy caddy Ruby Murray curry Schindler's List pissed Scooby-Doo, normally shortened to just 'Scooby,' e.g., "I haven't a Scooby" clue Wallace and Gromit vomit Winnie the Pooh shoe
Many examples have passed into common usage. Some substitutions have become relatively widespread in England in their contracted form. To have a butcher's, meaning , originates from butcher's hook, an S-shaped hook used by butchers to hang up meat, and dates from the late nineteenth century but has existed independently in general use from around the 1930s simply as butchers. Similarly, "use your loaf", meaning , derives from loaf of bread and also dates from the late nineteenth century but came into independent use in the 1930s.
Conversely usages have lapsed, or been usurped (Hounslow Heath for , was replaced by Hampsteads starting ).
In some cases, false etymologies exist. For example, the term barney has been used to mean an altercation or fight since the late nineteenth century, although without a clear derivation. Dialog in the 2001 film Ocean's Eleven incorrectly explains that barney derives from Barney Rubble, a character from the 1960's television cartoon The Flintstones.
Before the calendar change, St Barnabas Day fell on Midsummer's Day and had its own rhyme: Barnaby Bright, Barnaby Bright. The longest day and the shortest night, although the earliest reference is in Edmund Spenser's 1594 Epithalamion, with the lines "This day the sunne is in his chiefest hight, With Barnaby the bright...", giving a clear, though unproven, derivation.
Regional and international variations Rhyming slang is used mainly in London in England but can, to some degree, be understood across the country. Some constructions, however, rely on particular regional accents for the rhymes to work. For instance, the term Charing Cross (a place in London), used to mean since the mid-nineteenth century, does not work for a speaker without the lot–cloth split, common in London at that time but not nowadays. A similar example is Joanna meaning , which is based on the pronunciation of piano as "pianna" . Unique formations also exist in other parts of the United Kingdom, such as in the East Midlands, where the local accent has formed Derby Road, which rhymes with .
Outside England, rhyming slang is used in many English-speaking countries in the Commonwealth of Nations, with local variations. For example, in Australian slang, the term for an English person is pommy, which is generally believed to have originated as an abbreviation of pomegranate – a pararhyme of .The Oxford English Dictionary cites a well-known Australian weekly, The Bulletin, which on 14 November 1912 reported: "The other day a Pummy Grant (assisted immigrant) was handed a bridle and told to catch a horse." See
Rhyming slang is continually evolving, and new phrases are introduced all the time; new personalities replace old ones—pop culture introduces new words—as in "I haven't a Scooby" (from Scooby Doo, the eponymous cartoon dog of the cartoon series) meaning .: "1990s; earliest use found in the Glasgow Herald. Short for ScoobyDoo, the name of a cartoon dog which features in several U.S. television series and films (which typically include the name of the dog in the title), as rhyming slang for clue."
Taboo terms
Rhyming slang is often used as a substitute for words regarded as taboo, often to the extent that the association with the taboo word becomes unknown over time. Berk (often used to mean "foolish person") originates from the most famous of all fox hunts, the Berkeley Hunt meaning ; cobblers (often used in the context "what you said is rubbish") originates from cobbler's awls, meaning (as in testicles); and Hampton (usually ampton) meaning (as in penis) originates from Hampton Wick (a place in London) – the second part, wick, also entered common usage as "he gets on my wick" ().
Lesser taboo terms include pony and trap for (as in defecate, but often used to denote nonsense or low quality); to blow a raspberry (rude sound of derision) from raspberry tart for . Taking the Mick or taking the Mickey is thought to be a rhyming slang form of taking the piss, where Mick came from Mickey Bliss.
In December 2004 Joe Pasquale, winner of the fourth series of ITV's I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, became well known for his frequent use of the term Jacobs, for Jacob's Cream Crackers, a rhyming slang term for knackers .