Rhyming Slang

Rhyming slang is a remarkable, virtually unique example of a highly developed set of codes used by a particular speech community, the Cockneys, devised on the basis of disguise mechanisms. It uses witty and ingenious coded formulas to refer to objects of affection and hostility as well as taboo topics. Familiar examples are trouble and strife for “wife,” pork pie for “lie,” and cobbler’s awls for “balls.” The basic principle, as the reader can perceive, is that the last word or syllable of the formula supplies the rhyme for the coded word. There is often no logical connection between the formula and the coded term, although irony is often apparent.

The Cockneys are a community traditionally identified as inhabiting the East End of London, one of the poorer working-class districts of the metropolis. They developed this particular set of speech codes at least a century and a half ago. According to Eric Partridge, “The beginnings of rhyming slang are obscure. In colloquialism and slang cant [underground criminal argot] there were scattered traces of it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but there existed no body of rhyming slang before about 1840” (1960, 273). The first reference is in John Camden Hotten’s The Slang Dictionary (1859): “This cant … is known in Seven Dials [a disreputable part of London] as the Rhyming Slang, or the substitution of words and sentences which rhyme with other words intended to be kept secret…. I learn that the rhyming slang was introduced about twelve or fifteen years ago.” Henry Mayhew, in his classic study London Labour and the London Poor (1851), noted: “The new style of cadgers’ [street sellers’] cant is all done on the rhyming principle” (both cited in Ayto 2002, vii-viii). It may have originated, like cant, as a coded criminal language: hence forms like Barnaby Rudge for “judge” and Artful Dodger for “lodger.” But some forms have now become current in British English and various global varieties. Thus loaf of bread is originally rhyming slang for “head,” but as often happens, only the first term becomes current, generating the common phrase “use your loaf” for “use your head.”

In taboo areas several rhyming slang terms have become generally current in British English, clearly because their origins are no longer widely understood. Thus, Hampton Wick originally stands for prick , though it is most commonly encountered in such phrases as flashing his hampton for public indecency, which in turn gave rise to flasher for exhibitionist, as well as to dip one’s wick for coitus, and less obviously to get on one’s wick meaning “to annoy.” Likewise Berkeley (or Berkshire) Hunt stands for cunt , although it is most frequently found in the abbreviated form berk , now meaning only a fool or contemptible male person; the origins no longer being generally understood, it is now a common word, pronounced “burk.” Also common is bristols , derived from Bristol city , for titty . Similarly, from the example given earlier, cobblers is now in general use, meaning “balls” in the sense of “rubbish.”

Terms for homosexuals form an area of dispute among the authorities. Barltrop and Wolveridge assert that “There is no Cockney word for homosexuality,” pointing out that " queer has always meant ill" (1980, 81). However, Franklyn (1961) cites ginger beer (= queer) often reduced to plain ginger and recorded from the 1920s. Furthermore, all authorities agree on iron hoof (= poof , a term recorded as far back as ca. 1850–1860). Iron hoof itself is recorded from the 1930s, but iron went on to become a general slang term for “homosexual.”

Many of the categories and the concentrations of terms suggest a male chauvinist provenance with paternalistic attitudes toward women and xenophobia. Coded rhymes for foreigners are very common, with the Jews being the community most rhymed against, followed by Blacks. Although few of them are strictly xenophobic in their categorization or metaphorical assumptions, the terms form a fund of covert insider references to outsiders. Some sense of the range and ingenuity of rhyming slang terms can be gauged from the table opposite, which combines sexual, excretory, and xenophobic terms.

Points frequently raised concern the general currency, comprehension, and function of rhyming slang. As has been shown, a number of terms have now passed into general usage, so that their coded function is now lost. Furthermore, as recent studies, such as that by John Ayto (2002), have demonstrated, rhyming slang continues to grow, and is now found in most global varieties of English, having generated new forms, most of them amusing and innocent, such as Britney Spears for “beers,” Melvyn Bragg for “shag,” Sigourney Weaver for “beaver,” Brad Pitt for “shit,” Swiss Banker for “wanker” was used in a headline in the British tabloid The Sun (July 5, 2004). In many ways it is now a general form of wordplay.