Skip to main content

What is The Cockney Rhyming Slang?

By VJ
Cockney is a word associated with true Londoners. True cockneys are deemed born in a very small radius surrounding St. Mary-le-Bow church of the Eastern London. The general view is that anyone born to the toll of Mary-le-Bow church bells is regarded to be a cockney.
St Mary-le-Bow Church, Cheapside, LondonSt Mary-le-Bow Church in Cheapside, London

Rhyming slang is slang for a word that rhymes with it. Cockneys are very prone to using the rhyming slang, and hence the term, cockney rhyming slang. Cockney speech and accent that took birth in central London, though currently heard all across South-East England, is tightly associated with rhyming slang. Any word that rhymes with another becomes the slang expression of the latter.

For instance, the word ‘Plates of meat’ rhymes with the word ‘feet’. So, ‘Plates of meat’ is a cockney rhyming slang for ‘feet’, but many cockneys avoid the rhyming word, and use just the associated word. So, ‘plates’ itself means ‘feet’.

Other examples:

Butcher’s hook—Look

Scotch eggs—Legs

Loaf of bread—Head

Boat race—Face

Iron hoof—Poof (homosexual)

Bees and honey—Money

Daisy roots—Boots

Dickey dirt—Shirt

Dog and bone—Telephone

Mince pies—Eyes

North and south—Mouth

Elephant’s trunk—Drunk

See, some of the cockney rhyming slang expressions are very hilarious.

Most of these expressions originated in the cockney area, which is the East end of London, known popularly as The East End. But these expressions have traveled across the UK and is widely popular everywhere. General belief is that the cockney rhyming slang may have formed as a means to confuse the foreigners. Wikipedia speculates that the criminals may have used the rhyming slang as a cipher in presence of police.

The Cockney rhyming slang is in widespread use today, and any thought that they are dead is false, so says Cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk. For instance: “Use your loaf” is a popular expression in UK, and most people do not realize that ‘loaf’ stands for ‘loaf of bread’, which means ‘head’.

In Cockney Rhyming Slang UK site, you have the chance to contribute your own slang expressions as well. In the following posts, on Popular idioms and usages series in this blog, you will find so many instances of cockney rhyming slang.

Here is the main posts from Popular Idioms and Usages (some of them contain popular Cockney Rhyming slang expressions).

List of Popular Idioms and Usages Part A

Popular Idioms and Usages Part B

List of Popular Idioms and Usages Part C

Popular Idioms and Usages Part E

Popular Idioms and Usages Part I

Copyright © Lenin Nair 2008
Labels:

Comments

  1. Mel Avila AlarillaJune 4, 2008 at 5:55 PM

    Hi,
    I have already subscribed to your blog via email feeds. I hope you do the same with mine. My blog is Points of View with url- http://ponts-of-view.blogspot.com/. I have also included you in my blog roll. Thanks and God bless.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousAugust 14, 2008 at 2:39 AM

    Well thanks for this wonderful to learn more slangs I want to recommend a good collection of Slang Dictionaries presents you with a vast array of slang words and expressions, ranging from older and internationally recognized slangs to modern day coinages, colloquialisms, vulgarities and many other substandard usages of the English language.

    ReplyDelete
  3. VJAugust 14, 2008 at 2:43 AM

    Thanks for the comment. I will check it out.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated very strictly

Popular posts from this blog

What Is DoFollow? Guide: How to Make Blogspot Blogs Dofollow?

By VJ
Dear friends, this is a blog notification post. I have decided to make my blog, DoFollow. You will find the comment policy updated on the sidebar about this (please look at the left sidebar). [Edit: The blog is no longer DoFollow due to loads of spam comments it attracted ] Backlinks are very important for your websites. They are like votes cast by one respectable website to another, and they will greatly increase the site’s traffic. When one gets many backlinks, one’s site’s ranking in search engine results will skyrocket. Search engines use programs called search bots or web crawlers to access and index web pages. That’s how you see websites in the search results of Google and Yahoo!. If your site ranks high for any search terms related to the products you promote, you can get several potential customers (a very daunting task indeed). Now, in order for you to get business, you must rank high in search engines , and the most important thing that will help you in this is link build...
55 comments
Read more

Unethical Business Practices by Associated Content (AC)

By VJ
Useful Resources Freelance job at Constant Content Freelance for a 6 figure income Get paid to write on the Internet 25 Ways to write for income on the Internet Work from home as a virtual assistant Freelance for fortune 500 companies Today’s Internet slogan is ‘Content is King’ . If you have well-written, keyword rich content, without grammatical errors, then you can rank very high on search engine results, thus making a lot of money. With this business idea, several companies have sprung up, and Associated Content (who call themselves, People’s Media Company) is one among them. Here, we will try to find answers to these questions: 1. What exactly is Associated Content (if you don’t already know this)? 2. Is it really worthwhile to work with them? 3. Why should you steer right clear of them? What is Associated Content (AC) Associated Content (AC) is a website, in which you can earn money submitting content (text, video, audio, or images) . Anyone from anywhere in the...
53 comments
Read more

Organic SEO: How It Works?

By VJ
What really is Search Engine Optimization? (Photo credit: Go Local Search ) In order to have your blog posts reach the top of the search results, you really have to do a lot of thinking. One of these ways that you can experiment with is SEO. Search engine optimization is pretty important even if you have a regular personal blog. Who wouldn't like their stuff seen by more than ten or so people daily? However, the posts that get seen by a hundred thousand people daily are really profitable. They are simply at the top of their search terms and are meant to be good for earnings. If you have strong keywords in your article, they are going to rank you the best in search results. Let's look at some of the important SEO decisions you should make as a webpreneur. 1. Building A Lot of Links If you are keen about getting maximum visits to your blog, one thing you can do is gather as many links as possible from as many sources as possible. A few of the best practices in SEO ca...
Post a Comment
Read more