Cockney Rhyming Slang History | Hacker News Reader

Cockney Rhyming Slang History

romanroadlondon.com

93 pointsBerislavLopac74 comments

People outside England will probably assume Cockney Rhyming Slang is one of those things that nobody actually uses anymore and is just done in bad films to play up Englishness and to invoke a feeling of London... but it's actually pretty common to hear people using it naturally and un-ironically in speech here - especially examples like 'I haven't got a Scooby, mate' or 'let's go for a Ruby after this'.

I went to a carwash disco wearing full-on glam-rock attire. Got on the DLR and was met with a "BLIMEY! Look a the Lionels on 'im!" :)

I too hear it all the time. I also use it a lot, too.

In case anyone's wondering, Lionels -> Lionel Blair (a British entertainer of the 1970/80s) -> flairs

I used to row with a Cockney. He had a few good sayings. One of my favourites was "Woah, that got the strawberry goin'" (strawberry -> strawberry tart -> heart) which was visually appealing too.

Ruby or Ruby Murry is in common use generally for going to an Indian Restaurant.

All the cockney rhyming slang I know I learned from Del on Only Fools and Horses.

Loved, still do, this program growing up.

That's where I learned all my French.

Got a lot from that and some from Eastenders. Managed to learn how to understand Geordie (and a few others) through too much "auf wiedersehen pet" :)

Del boys lingo has been documented for posterity here http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/onlyfools/lingo/euro.shtml

I'm not a Londoner, I come from further south, in an area that has an almost "Received Pronunciation" way of speaking.

When I moved to the US, I discovered I used two bits of it really often. "Scooby", that you mentioned, and "Butchers". Butchers Hook -> Look, e.g. "If you can give me a couple of minutes, I'll take a butchers at it, see if I can see what's going on".

I had to break out of that habit fairly quickly, cut down on a bunch of confusion for folks. A coworker at the time half-jokingly commented that he didn't understand half the things I said, but always figured it out from context.

This reminds me of Ocean's Eleven, where everyone in the group effortlessly understood the Chinese member, but noone understood the British member when he said stuff like "We're in Barney" which he had to explain as "you know, Barney Rubble, trouble".

A second-level joke is that in reality "barney" is slang for "argument" or "fight", which British slang got from Australia in the 1920s according to Partridge. Its introduction to Britain pre-dates the invention of the cartoon character by about four decades.

In sporting slang from the century before, it used to mean a race/fight/contest that had been fixed or that was in some way unfair, a swindle.

* https://archive.org/details/slangdictionarye00hottuoft/page/...

Gis'a butchers.

"Butchers" was the word that made me realise how much Cockney Rhyming Slang I used and why it was not always appropriate. I had a Polish housemate and needed to speak s-l-o-w-l-y in order to be understood. Having to spend time explaining what a butcher's hook was and what Cockney Rhyming Slang was, in a word - 'whoosh!'.

As the article states, multi-culturalism just leads to less use, and I am guilty of changing my ways to stay away from beloved terms, for instance 'Barnet'.

A variant of the phrase 'nicely chipped Barnet' can be used to acknowledge someone having a fresh haircut. Delivered with a nod and a smile this is neither a gushing compliment (to make them feel awkward) or ignorance of their fancy new hairdo. There is an aspect of friendliness and humour to it. It just breaks the ice. Of course this is lost on anyone from outside the UK (even Americans - as you discovered - although Australians and New Zealanders get with it).

As for Received Pronunciation, and 'almost'. That 'almost RP' is the pronunciation you want. RP isn't what it was, maybe Radio 4 English Accent is where it is today. People from all walks of life are okay with this 'posh' but not too posh accent. It is respectful of the person you are speaking with in much the same way as written English is respectful of the reader's time if you use spelling, punctuation and some structure.

With 'posh English' it has to be with the words Orwell would use - short ones rather than long ones. Yet we have a few people in public life such as the current Prime Minister who do the exact opposite, to bamboozle people with vocabulary, making them sound 'public school posh'.

Is it the general "algorithm" that's still in use? Or is it more like there's a collection of known slang phrases, that happened to have been generated that way in the past, that are known and used.

For example, what's the newest example in use? For that matter, do people still use it as sort of a "puzzle" for their friends? Or do they mostly use phrases that are known by all already?

It’s a mix of known terms and newly invented ones. Obscure cultural references are popular, whether recent or not. My favorite... Jecklls = trousers. Reasoning thusly:

Jeckll from Jeckll and Hyde. Hyde rhymes with stride. Stride is Australian slang for trousers.

I explained this to a linguist at my university and she was beyond ecstatic.

That's excellent. Also normally I wouldn't care but because it's your favorite and you will probably have occasion to write it out again, it's spelled Jekyll. :)

There is 'Sherman' for an American which is Sherman Tank -> Yank. So that can only be WW2 onwards. And 'Ruby' for curry (Ruby Murray) is from the fifties. Those are the most recent I can think of.

Septic is the usual one for Yank. Sherman is too polite to be true. Besides, septics have been around far longer than WWII.

Pete tong.

It’s all gone a bit Pete Tong.

Radio DJ in the 1990s.

Davina's - Davina McCall. eg kick 'im in the davina's.

Often the Tong is dropped - It's all gone a bit pete or even s'gone peter

Britney Spears = Beers. Brad Pitt = Shit.

"Get the Britneys in, I'll be back in a minute - I'm off for quick Brad".

I used to use Cockney Rhyming slang every day at work.

A fair few of the guys trading derivatives when I started were "locals" is two senses of the word: they were from London and they they traded as market makers.

You'd have special words for numbers like donkey and monkey. Combined with general market terms you'd say things like "I'll lift you for a donkey", IIRC meaning I'll buy 250 of those contacts.

Where is the rhyming connection here?

Good question, it would be hidden. You'd ask a guy wtf "Lady Godiva" meant and he'd say "Fivah". The animals for numbers, I don't remember. Possibly some connection ages ago that you similarly needed to have the story for.

Ah, I incorrectly inferred that you were involved in the creation of the slang.

It is London slang, but it isn't necessarily Rhyming slang. In fact, these terms are generally understood to have originated as racing/bookmakers' slang, and go back to at least the end of the 18th century. This is a 19th century slang dictionary.

* https://archive.org/details/slangdictionarye00hottuoft/page/...

One of those lemmata casts doubt on the veracity of "Port Out, Starboard Home." I also enjoyed the dual meanings of pot-walloper, similar to "cutting coupons" shifting semantics at opposite ends of the NRS social grades.

At first I was skeptical and assumed that you had not realized the parent comment to which I had replied. But I checked and was still skeptical when I checked 'monkey' but indeed there was an alternate definition that was numerical. However I can't find one for 'donkey'. But maybe the parent's memory is faulty or more recent slang has added these numerical denotations in a greater context than just the parent's past workplace.

For anyone like me wondering what these brits are on about, here’s a decoding:

“Scooby” => “Scooby Doo” => “Clue”, making “I haven’t got a clue, mate”

“Ruby” => “Ruby Murray” => “curry”, making “let’s go for a curry after this”.

After dog detective scooby doo resolved to “clue” I was hoping that there was at least internal consistency between the rhyming phrase and the intended word, but as far as I can tell there is no relationship between a Northern Irish actress from the 1950’s and Indian cuisine.

Many parts of it exist in Australian slang as well, probably other colonies too.

There was a lot of cross-pollination with Digger slang because of the world wars.

Consider the word "berk" - a fairly mild sounding insult that's a bit like "jerk" - but which actually implies something rather stronger.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/berk

Verlan, like Lunfardo, often makes up basilect argot vocabulary by swapping syllables from the acrolect. A problem occurs when the slang term becomes too popular, and the process needs to repeat (without self-inverting) to invent a new cryptic term.

For instance, femme -> meuf -> feumeu, of which I regularly hear the second in my unhip rural area, but have not yet heard the third.

Argies reportedly have chambon -> boncha -> chabón.

I'll have to check up on the pronunciation of Berkeley Castle. We had a vowel shift a few centuries back and Berkeley is often pronounced "barclay" but not always. If the castle name uses the modern pronunciation then berk doesn't work!

Whatever the etymology, berk is considered no worse than jerk hereabouts (UK.)

I'd never heard of CRS until I worked for someone who grew up with it -- he had a music marketing company; I had perl skills -- right after the turn of the century.

It was confusing at first, but very quickly my business partner and I were throwing the terms around as often as him -- we couldn't call because we were already "on the dog" (dog and bone -> telephone), or asking each other to "have a butcher's" (butcher's hook -> look) at new code committed, etc.

In the end we were all greeting each other as chinas (china plate -> mate), and lamenting the lack of a good Ruby Murry (-> curry) in the town he lived in. I found it all pretty charming and fascinating.

Charming, cheeky Cockney chappies are not universally loved in this fairest of isles: http://viz.co.uk/category/cockney-wanker/

Millwall represent.

Probably the most widely known Cockney rhyming phrase is "blowing a raspberry", which comes from "raspberry tart"...

There are a lot that people use. "Give me a Butchers" (Butcher's hook - look) is another I still hear a lot. Or just "giz a butch" as a more colloquial version. I think "having a Ruby" is less common outside of Greater London.

Context: I'm from the South Coast, navy town, and we had a lot of dockers from London move here in the 19th and 20th centenaries. If you listen to the way older people speak, they have a cockney twang with some Hampshire vowels thrown in. Growing up we used a lot of rhyming slang mixed in with a lot of London slang and "Gypsy" words. So off the top of my head (sorry - none are rhyming slang): Mush/geezer for man (and geezer is not an old man like in American usage), to chav - steal, khark it - die, bird - woman, mare - any bad situation, having a mare - having a bad time, squin(ny) - someone prone to crying or telling tales, din(lo) - idiot, dinny - stupid, lairy - cheeky or confrontational, to cop - to be angry. You get the idea. Most of the consonants sound like Londonish ones, most Londonish vowels are different. So (in some rough approximation) "dane" for down, rather than "dahn", "pained" for pound rather than "paahnd", but baw for ball, bu'a for butter, and li'aw for little, hevva for heather, fing for thing. English accents are sent to blow American minds - that much I'm sure of.

Also "I couldn't give a monkey's", though don't think that is CRS, but definitely slang I am used to (and use)

Great list! IIRC, "mare" (for a bad time) is just a contraction of "nightmare".

We used to say "having a weston" for that - from weston super mare.

Yeah that works. I think I've heard it too.

Yeah, it is.

"Eezup geez! oi'm avin a roiht mare wiv me owlady. She wuz wew narked wiv me an trieda knock me sparkh ayt laas noiht"

"Don't be harsh with me old boy. I'm having a lot of trouble with my other half. She is very upset with me and tried to violently render me unconscious last night."

The oih usually rhymes with boy, but really has a hit of a H, depending on how common/drunk the individual speaking is. The a appended to words is like a "to", but it becomes a running vowel sound, like "gonna", but people do use it stand alone. I've heard "see ya ah morrah" (see you tomorrow) where the 'ah' is a schwa and probably could be prefixed to "morrah", I guess. Sometimes a K sound is quite aspirated, but only for effect, never consistently.

It's weird. A lot less people use this accent these days. And whenever people apparently come from this area on TV they always put on a posh version and sound more like Farmers. Funny really.

I wouldn't think of that as the 'most widely known', tbh

It might be not known to be a rhyming slang, but the phrase is in use pretty much everywhere.

Or "brass tacks" < "facts".

In the US, it's gotta be "bread," as in "bread & honey." I think the "dukes" in "put up your dukes" is also supposed to come from Cockney rhyming slang, but I can't remember how.

I've heard Bag* (for £1000/$1000) in American rap songs.

I believe this came via grime (originating in cockney heartland Bow) musicians using it >

Grime fan/cultural superspreader Drake picking it up

*bag of sand = grand

Money slang finds its way into my speech when I'm chatting with mates from the East, we might be discussing buying a old motorbike or something and it'll be like, "yeah, it's not bad for a monkey, is it?!" or it'd be everyday chat, "cost me a score" or "set aside a ton".

My mates were all diehard Millwall fans for those that would understand theconnection.

score is basically biblical From the Bible, Psalm 90, verse 10: "The days of our years are three score and ten."

Yes, true, can something be slang if it's just old? "Dozen" is pretty old too, but is never used for money.

Was until 1971 in the UK 12 * 20 = 240 pence in pound.

12 pence in a shilling and funnily 20 shillings in a pound.

Biblical? It's a lot older than any English bible; scoring (reckoning in base 20) just happened to be something were very familiar with at the time the Tyndale and later King James bibles were translated. Children's games in parts of England still use Celtic-derived "sheep scoring" numbers.

Across the pond, Yanks who 'member a bit from HS history class can probably recite ol' Honest Abe's most famous opening line, "Four score and seven years ago...".

A Cockney Lorem Ipsum generator [0].

[0] https://www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/cockney-lorem-ipsum/

This cartoon manages to cram a lot of commentary on British society, plus a nice rhyming slang reference: https://twitter.com/gibbs_jonathan/status/116641737510274253... ;)

(Link to the archive: https://www.alexcartoon.com/archive-result.cfm?action=search...)

I wonder if one could build a programming language with CRS. I mean, if you can use Brainfuck for all sorts of things, why not?

  Metcheck fac blinders Amanda rooster: 
    Scratch&sniff rooster nun&priest bottle 
      Yes&amen rooster bow_bells_chimes fac(rooster thomas_aquinas quid)
      Picts&celts quid .

Or should even the operation formerly known as ! be renamed to Fleetwood?

Better parallel than Brainfuck, the Shakespeare programming language: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_Programming_Lang...

Are there any examples of phrases which can mean their opposites when unslanged?

For instance, if the Expanse's asteroid Belters used rhyming slang, I could imagine:

    Da Rosi du sensa.      (we say) The Rocinante apologise
    Komante nakangepensa.  (we mean) Management are cretins

Nice unknown host. I sometimes magic dunder if we could do the same with fopen and lseek slang. Anyone have any 404?

(Upon reflection, the other direction also works, as in radio edits that fail to rhyme.)

406, mate

I used to work with a bit of a "geezer". He would use what I termed 2nd order rhyming slang.

"He got it right in the Aris!"

Aris => Aristotle => Bottle => Bottle & glass => Ass

A similar anecdote, except this 'geezer' was a Mockney from Essex (not so dissimilar to Jamie Oliver).

"Lets go for an oily"

Oily ─> Oily Rag ─> Fag ─> Cigarette

A lot of cockneys moved from the east end to essex during the 70-90s. My family was one of them.

Oi Oi Savaloy! I was taught this by a very rough and tumble looking cockney gentleman in a spanish pub near oxford street in london. I almost thought he was a con artist because of the non stop sob stories he told throughout the evening but when I tired to give him two hundred pounds (it was great entertainment value), he got offended and refused to accept it.

Us Brits just like to moan about things, its what brings us together.

I know the article mentions The Kinks but I'll call out Harry Rag specifically since it's what I recognized the subject from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeOLVKeV-Ec

I'm curious, is there any canonical cockney rhyming slang for "dictionary" or "thesaurus"? Failing that does anyone have any suggestions to add to the lexicon for either or?

I'd certainly be Pete Tong for canonical[1], but suggest County and vegetarian, respectively? (County Tipperary, vegetarian brontosaurus)

[1] posting anyway as I suspect those two examples may be somewhat judicially to have a common slang Dickie. (judicially hyperkalemic, Dickie Bird)

This is why banning certain words is doomed to failure.

You need a "tanj it!" at the end of that sentence. (-:

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