September 23, 2023 • 42 mins
What is Cockney Rhyming Slang? It's complicated and its origins are unclear. Learn everything we know about it today in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's your old pal Josh. And for this
week's select, I've chosen our episode from November of twenty
nineteen on Cockney rhyming slang. This is one of those
silly episodes that's also packed with a lot of interesting information.
And I remember Chuck and I having fun making yet
so I hope you'll enjoy listening to it too.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Enjoy Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles w Chuck Bryant right there. There's Jerry Rowland
right there. So that makes this stuff you should know
right in. That's it for me. Can't top that.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I was trying to think a way to say welcome
to the podcast and cockney rhyming slang. Can you make
an intense My brain is are broken right now. I
can't even try.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Okay, good, good, well, welcome.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
It's a good good time to record a show, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
You're gonna do some cocknye in here, right. We want
to offend as many Londoners as we can.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
I don't know, just just channel a little Dick Van Dyke.
Oh you know, Yeah, the American.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Doing a bad Cockney accent.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Well, I did recently rewatch The Limey.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yes, for Casey's Benefits.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Yeah, the great, great movie from Steven Soderberg.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Never seen it.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
It's awesome, is it really? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I mean I know it's like a classic and everybody
loves it, but I mean it's really that good? Huh Yeah,
because a lot of people liked I don't know, The Hangover.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I like the Hangover?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Well, how would you? How would you like The Linemy
and the Hangover? Same level?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yeah, they're the same movie almost all right, it's weird.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Well, then I've seen The Hangover, so I don't need
to see the Limy.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
No, the Lemmy's great and Terrence Stamp is awesome, and
it and uses some Cockney rhymings in one great scene.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
My big exposure to Cockney rhyming slang is Lockstock in
Two Smoking Barrels Snatch, Yeah, which I think are both
directed by Guy Ritchie. Right, wasn't Lockstock like his first
attempt in Snatch was the one that like got him
married to Madonna?
Speaker 3 (02:17):
You a fan of Hits?
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah? I mean as much as I like his movies,
I don't like him personally necessarily because he like hunts,
bore like a jackass.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
And stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah, like drunk with his friends in the most like
disrespectful way of murdering a pig.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
I've meant his movies, but yeah, I do like his
movie sounds like he's a creep too.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
I'm not going to go on record saying that, but
you know.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Uh, yeah, those movies are okay. And then I guess, uh,
what's his name? Don Cheatle a little bit in Ocean's eleven. Sure,
he did a little bit of.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
That, right, And I mean like it's code to Americans,
it's oh, there's like a criminal, a British criminal, right,
that's all that means these days?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Yeah, I think so. In movies, it's definitely like all
of those are criminal, criminal people in the movie.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
But they're like, you know, kind of slick, cool criminals
that like boil leather coats and stuff like that, not
dumb criminals that were like football jerseys or anything like that.
They're like, you know, smooth criminals. That's I think what
I was looking for. Yeah, but this idea of associating
it with Cockney is not necessarily associating it with criminals.
It's more associated with like lower class, working class, less educated, definitely,
(03:31):
not the aristocracy over in Britain.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Yeah, or the upper class.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Sure, And that by speaking with a Cockney accent, or
more to the point, using Cockney rhyming slang, you could
really differentiate yourself to it as a point of pride,
like you were speaking like your group. You're in group,
which was at the time Cockney. But the big surprise
to all this is it's really possible and even probable
(03:56):
that it wasn't the Cockney that came up with this
rhyming slang, that it was somebody else altogether.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Maybe who knows? Should we say what it is?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
No, not for the rest of the podcast.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Cockney rhyming slang. It wasn't even very clearly defined in
this piece. Okay, did do you think it was? It's
in there, Okay. You got to just kind of separate
the wheat from the chaff. So it is a two
word phrase. It is a slang phrase consisting of two
(04:30):
words or the last word of that phrase rhymes with
the original word. And it can be and I think
the best way to do this is just to throw
out a few no, no, keep describing well, the two
word phrase. It can be. It can be a lot
of things. It can be a person's name, it can
be just something random. It can be a place, could
be a place, It could be a lot of things.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
It can be anything.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Yeah, sure, I guess it can be m But shall
we illustrate it through.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Well, there's a second part to it too, Ok, the
second part, and this is very important. The two word
phrase that you're using to that where the second word
rhymes with the word you're actually saying.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Yeah, the original word, the original word thank.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
You, usually has nothing to do with it. There's no metaphor,
there's no connection, there's no nothing, there's no there's no
context to it. It's supposed to just be random or
in most cases it is just random words, right, one
of which rhymes with the word you're replacing.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
And to further complicate things, Sure, in a lot of cases,
and no one knows why. Sometimes this happens, and sometimes
it doesn't a lot of times that one of the
words of the two word phrase is dropped yep, and
then you're just left with the one word which doesn't
even rhyme with the original word anymore. Right.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
That's I mean, that's probably the best description of cockney
rhyming slaying anyone's ever given.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
So I think we should illustrate it with a couple
of examples. I pulled some from from some thing called
the Internet.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Here here's one, the the tip and tet. That's how
long it took me to come up.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
With that tip and tet for the Internet.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
But in ten years it'll just be called the tip.
I'm going to log onto the tip Governor.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
So let's say your word was, and this was in
Ocean's eleven, specifically, trouble is the word that you're trying
to say. Cockney rhyming slang for trouble is Barney rubble awesome,
And so you would say you're making a bit of
the Bonnie rubbled again.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Right when somebody that was kind of who was.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
That making a bit of Bonnie rubble? Not the see
I already did it wrong.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
No, but I think that like a real person to
an American for sure. Oh yeah, I can't, I can't.
I'll shout it out later.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Man, I finally did a good one. We just I
just don't know who.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
But it wasn't a Cockney person, is okay.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Another example for Queen, they would use the term baked bean.
Look it is on TV, it's the baked bean, right,
and that's the queen. Or in the case of one
that's been dropped, what does ed use here? Bees and honey?
Speaker 1 (07:15):
That one is not dropped for money?
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Oh okay? But which one was apples and pears for stairs? Right?
Speaker 1 (07:22):
So you would say I'm going to go up the
apple and stairs apples and pears? Oh man, let me
retake this. Everybody. You would say, I'm going to go
up the apples and pears to go get my wallet
to pay for this pizza, or something to that effect.
But then over time people drop the pears, and so
(07:44):
now the word for stairs in Cockney rhyming slang is
just apples, which, if you're just standing there on the
outside like a normal American bloke, sure, by the way,
it means person. You have no idea why this person
just called stairs apples. You got what they were saying,
because the context is there, you're going up the apples
(08:04):
to get your wallet to pay for the pizza. But
why would you just say that? Did you did you
hit your head? Is there something wrong with you? What's
the problem? Why would you just call that apples? Yeah,
that's why it's so confounding. But the great thing about
cockney rhyming slang, and in particular the great thing about
researching cockney rhyming slang, is you learn how you get
from apples to stairs, and then it makes sense. Sometimes yeah,
(08:30):
it's true, it's not always.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yeah, sometimes there's uh, it's it's not documented, which Ed
points out as one of the problems. Sometimes you can
draw the line the through line, but because it's not documented,
and sometimes these things take years and years to morph
into its final version. Right unless you unless you're you know,
on the uh, what would you call streets on the door?
(08:56):
Now on the streets, then you wouldn't know. But I
don't know what streets is. You can it just makes
stuff up, Like there's real words.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
On the drums and beats, so got the drums.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Right, but they probably have a word for streets. Like
that's the whole point. You can't just make anything up
but the but you could if it hasn't been taken yet.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Sure. But also that's the other thing about cockney rhyming
slang is it evolves, right, so old celebrities that no
one even knows about anymore fall away to new celebrities
whose name also rhyme with you know whatever word you're saying.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Right, I thought you meant old celebrities who maybe used
to talk this way like Michael Kaine.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
No, he's never said any rhyming slang in his life.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Of course, you got to see the movie Alfie.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Maybe that's who it was. It might have been Michael Kane.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
I don't take that Michael Kaine. I think it was.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
As a matter of fact, Yeah, thank you, I'm glad
you did it.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Noel always says a good joke is to say Michael
Kain in the correct accent, say the words my cocaine.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
And it sounds like Michael Kaine saying it.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Then it sounds like the correct accent for Michael Kaine.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Right, my cocaine.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Well, you just blew that one out.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
You gotta set me up in the future. Now you
haven't recorded seeing my cocaine.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Well there's I've got it two ways now.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Man cocaine.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Here's the thing, my cocaine. That's my cocaine. That's pretty good,
Michael Caine. It is good. You're right, Noel, you just
got to say it the right way and not like
a robot Josh. So here's one of the things that
sort of confounding if you want to look up a
like a glossary and say, well, here's what I'm gonna do.
(10:41):
I'm gonna learn Cockney rhyming slang. So for my trip
to England, I'm really you know, I'm really in with everybody.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Really.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
First of all, bad idea. Second of all, it's it
can be very localized and the accents are all different.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Yeah, so even people in London who who all use well,
people in London don't really do. But the people who
use Cockney rhyming slang in London might not even agree
on what word means.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
What. I'm just picturing all the people walking around England
laughing their arses off.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Oh, I can't wait to get to that one.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
As we stumble through this. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Ed had a really good example of why there's no
codification of the Cockney rhyming slang. He said that when
people are creating a language, especially informal ones like slang,
they don't write it all down. Quote, dear Diary referred
to my house as a cat and mouse today because
it rhymed. We all had a good laugh.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Might try just calling it cat tomorrow and see how
it goes. It is it sounds funny, but that's that's
how it works. Can you stumbling across a diary that
said that? And here's the other thing too, is there
are cases where there is a little bit of a
reflection of the original word. And the example that it
(12:01):
gives here is twist. Yeah, like to call a woman
a twist, which I don't know if that's a derogatory
or not, or just some weird slang that no one
uses anymore.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
I don't think so, although I don't know. So yeah,
these are also the people who use the C word
like it's nothing.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
Well, I can say fanny, oh man, I can't wait
to go back there, which we're gonna do soonest right,
I'd love to do in twenty twenty maybe yeah, all right.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Uh so twist came from twist and twirl, which meant girl,
which is uh they were talking about like dancing with
a girl twisting and twirling in a nightclub.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Let's say, so there is some connection in that one.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Yeah, so girl ended up becoming twist, so that sort
of makes sense.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
There's another one called on your Todd after a guy
named Todd Sloane, and it means on your own right
and The thing is is like On your Todd, it
makes sense Sloan rhymes with own. It doesn't have to
have any connection, but that one actually does. Yeah, because
Todd Sloan was a famous jockey in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Like horse jockey, yes, okay, what other kind is there?
Disc jockeys?
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Oh yeah, sure. So his book, his memoir, was called
Todd Sloane by himself, which is weird to refer to
yourself in third person for your memoir, But there was
a line in it that apparently east Enders in London
like really picked up, I was left alone by those
I never ceased to grieve for, And so like the
(13:30):
idea of being alone or on your own became synonymous
with Todd Sloane. His name just happened to rhyme with that.
So it's one of those rare ones where there is
a connection to it, and also rare chuck in that
this is a nineteenth century horse jockey and still today
On Your Todd is recognized as on your.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Own, whereas a lot of people probably have no idea.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Exactly from who he is. And when that happens that
frequently that person gets moved out for potentially another celebrity
or another word that's a little more understandable. Recognized another
new jockey to people today, Right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Which can you name one?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Nope?
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Nope, all right, maybe we should take a break and
we'll talk about some of the other some other examples
after this message.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
Salvation, no sevision, no.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Okay, we're back. Jerry just opened the loudest sandwich in
the history of the world. Really, she's like, hold on
a minute, and it's sounded like it was in a
space blanket.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
It was like Ernest opens a sandwich over here.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
That was a good one. Not as good as part two.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
No, I saw that first one in the theater.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Yeah. So here's some other examples that have Some of
them have sort of stayed over in England and some
of have found their way, Like apparently the term put
up your dukes. Oh, I didn't know the cockney rhyming slang,
so and I didn't write down where dukes came from.
But that's where it was originally a Cockney rhyming slang term. Yeah,
(15:12):
because so you would think it had to do with
fists or something. Duke's for fists. Why didn't I write
that down?
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Okay, But so That's another really important point to say
about Cockney rhyming slang. It's frequently rhyming slang based on slang,
so the word it's replacing is the slang word to
begin with. So who knows what the dukes actually rhymed
with at any point?
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Yeah, that's a good point. So first of all, I've
never heard this blowing a raspberry. What have you heard
of that? Yeah? That's tooting out of your that what.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
I just did is as much blowing a raspberry as
actually farting.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Oh really? Yeah? Okay, well I've heard of giving someone
a raspberry, like, okay, that's the same thing. Yeah, okay,
Well apparently that's derived from raspberry tart slang for fart.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 3 (16:04):
It's pretty great?
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Yeah, So that one is one of the rare ones
I love talking about exceptions. Do you know that?
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Sure, that's one of the rare ones that made its
way to America because of right, everyone but you knows
what blowing a raspberry is?
Speaker 3 (16:18):
I guess I've never heard of the term blowing, but
giving someone a raspberry same thing.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
I found two more. One is controversial. It's not set
in stone, but it's as good an explanation as any
get down to brass tacks.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
I saw that one too.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
That's a stand in for facts. Let's get down to
the bear facts.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Possibly it's not right done. One that is one hundred percent,
as far as I can tell, is bread.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
I saw that too. For money. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
In America, bread and honey became just bread, right, and
it caught on here and caught on again just now.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Well, bees and honey though, was also for money, right.
Is that just one of the local depends on where
you are things.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Yeah, okay, yeah, but in America, I mean, you know,
we use bread. Everybody calls it bread.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Yeah. I didn't know that that'd come back.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, somebody wrote in to say it had come back.
Let's get this bread right.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
I guess. So that's over familiar.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
You need to spend more time on Reddit.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Here's another one. Dog and bone stands in for phone,
call me on the dog and bone. Sure, And then
Ed says there may be some kind of correlation between
one silver words that lead off that phrase staying in
the phrase, But I don't There are so many exceptions.
I don't know if there is a rule exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
And I think that's really, this is worth saying. We
looked all over the place I know ed did too,
for straight up linguistic dissertations and papers on cockney rhyming slange. Right,
it's not there. No, it's just treated as fun and hilarious,
even though it is its own made up language that's
ever evolving. Still live is around. We'll talk about the
(18:01):
history in a minute for one hundred and fifty plus years.
But apparently no linguist has ever thought enough of it
to sit down and write a genuine paper about it.
So we couldn't find that. But the one thing that
really occurred to me was in looking into it. I
don't know if it could ever be explained. I think
it's the result of so many individual decisions and then
(18:24):
collective agreements to take up and go along with those decisions.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Yeah, and those.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Agreements can be totally undermined by a new individual decision
that catches on how could you possibly map and even
understand all or explain all of that different stuff. But
even though we can't explain it, once you start to
learn how it works, it's understandable. So you can't explain,
but you can't understand it.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
Yeah, and it's like I always wonder with any kind
of slang or like who makes the stuff up, who
sets the rules. It's probably just the kind of thing
that just starts on a playground and spreads from there
and gets codified unofficially. Yep. Then everyone's using it, sure,
but I wonder if they're I don't know. You can't
(19:12):
trace this stuff, which is sort of frustrating as researchers,
because I think we like to pinpoint things.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Yeah, but it I mean people have tried to trace
it and they've come awfully close.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Well, we'll get to that in a minute. Okay, I
want to go over some more of these. All right,
I want to get up on my plates and get out.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Of here your meat, your plates of meat.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Plates of meat, which is feet or between podcasts, you
probably have to go take a rattle. Yep, rattle and hiss,
rattle and hiss like a snake. You got it, And
that's means peep, right exactly. And then I guess we
should talk about ars. Yeah, sure, that's the one you
were pretty excited about.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Yes, because it goes even so much farther than urs
even Yeah, it's pretty convoluted. Okay, you want to take
it no, go ahead, Okay, so ours the very famous
named for ass in the UK. Everybody knows that. Sure,
it's actually it comes from Aristotle, which you're like, well,
what does that have to do with ass? Well, let
(20:11):
me tell you. Aristotle is Cockney rhyming slang for bottle. Again,
the question is what does that have to do with ass? Well.
Originally the Cockney rhyming slang word for ass was bottle
and glass, right, became shortened to bottle. Somebody came along
and rhymed Aristotle with it. That got shortened to aris
(20:32):
and then to Arsey goes even further than that. Oh yeah,
I saw one plaster for ars plaster of Paris, Aris, Aristotle, bottle,
bottle and glass ass. That's how deep that Cockney rhyming
slang has covered up the collective ass of the UK.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Yeah, and again it's like, why you can't You can't
put that in a book and explain it in any
kind of way that makes sense. You got to do
it on a podcast or a paper. You just have
to accept it. It's like, that's how it happened on
the street. I think that's a really good way on
the streets to the east end. Right, right in your cocaine. No,
not your cocaine. They do have. For all that we're
(21:15):
saying about how don't look at glossaries and stuff like that,
they do have dictionaries that you can buy. If you're
a total square, I would guess it's probably not a
cool thing to do. That's like saying, you know, I
want to become a rapper, so let me get a
rhyming dictionary. Although I did have a rhyming dictionary at
one point.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Well, rhyming it's not, you know, just limited to kochne.
We know rhyme, Yeah, which is one assertion ed makes
for why it's popular or so long lasting.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Well, should we talk about some of the theories on
where it originated, because I looked in a bunch of
places and I don't think I mean, I think calling
it theory is a little I think they kind of
know where it came from. They just don't know exactly
why the campaign point it to like on this day,
(22:05):
on this in this place.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Right.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
But it's not a complete mystery though.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
No, they've got it basically localized to about a one
and a half mile area of London and basically down
to the year. It's just exactly where and exactly who's
in exactly why are the real outstanding questions, which is
actually a lot of questions.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Yeah, one of the one of the whys was that
in this one I think doesn't have as much credence now.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
But no, but it's like the most common one.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Right is that you will hear that it was coded
language created by criminals to keep the cops confused as
to what was going on, right, which makes sense in
one way because it certainly could cause confusion, But it
also and I think ed makes a pretty good point
that like, were they, like, were cops just hanging around
overhearing things like why did they feel like they needed
(22:56):
to create this whole language? And cops, if they were
street cops would have figured this stuff out as well,
you know, because it wouldn't have been that big of
a secret. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
There's this guy named Dick Sullivan who wrote an essay
on the Victorian Web which is actually kind of cool, huh,
And he said the street cops would have come from
the same areas and families and neighborhoods that the criminals
would have, so they would have been raised on this
rhyming slang anyway. Sure, So it doesn't really hold up
to scrutiny when you look at it like that. It
(23:27):
was a intentionally created coded language meant to confuse the cops.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Right then. That's not to say it nevertheless wasn't associated
with some kind of criminal underworld East London types.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Yeah, and it almost certainly was taken up by the Cockneys,
but it wasn't necessarily cock news or criminals who came
up with this rhyming slang. To begin with.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
There's this guy named John Camden Hotton, and he wrote
one of the better titled, or at least most directly
titled books I've ever heard of, Colon No, there's not.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
There are a couple commas though a dictionary of modern slang,
Can't and vulgar words used at the present day in
the streets of London, And he has a chapter on
rhyming slang, and he basically says that it was two
groups shaunters and patterers, basically traveling salesmen who would stand
(24:22):
on street corners and hawk their wares and you know,
maybe pick your pocket while you were trying to buy
something from them, and that they came up with Cockney
rhyming slang.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Yeah, and I saw that enough to think that that's
probably true.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah. The Schaunters in particular spoken like singing rhyming language,
so it would.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Have been a pretty quick evolution. Yeah, I think this
one makes a lot of sense. Street criers, I mean,
England and London especially has a long tradition of street
corner barkers and things like this, right. I remember seeing
one myself when I traveled there in the nineties and
I was like, they're still doing this stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
It was like a box in the park where you
can go stand on it, soapbox maybe, I mean that's
where that came from, right, probably, and just you know,
shout your piece. Sure, And then I saw guy doing it
and I thought, what year is this? This is wonderful, right,
it's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
But in particular the Chaunters, they sang and then sold
penny ballads, sheet music of penny ballads that they would
write real quick. After somebody famous died or there was
a train wreck or something, they'd write a ballad about
it and then be out in the corners selling these things.
But because they were singing in rhymes and sing song,
it's a really good bet that these guys were the
(25:34):
ones who originated rhyming slang, but not necessarily for any
kind of intentionally coded language, because that same guy, Dick Sullivan, says,
there's no reason for patterers who sold their you know,
little gigaws or trinkets or whatever. I love that word,
or shaunters who were selling these penny ballads. They worked alone.
(25:57):
There was no need for them to come up with
a coded.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Lange would communicate with one another.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah, in front of a customer who they were ripping off,
because they didn't need to communicate with one another in
front of customers.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Well, I saw that maybe they, you know, could communicate
with each other when customers were around or something.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
I don't know, right, But the other part of that
is that it supposedly flies in the face of how
slang develops, that it's unintentional, right, Like you don't say,
let's come up with a coded language and here's how
it works.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Yeah, even like American teenagers when they have slang that
their parents don't understand, Like you remember how that stuff went.
It was something you just heard. You never sat around. Sure,
I'm hip to that and said, you know, like, hey,
let's use this other word that our parents won't know
what it means.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Right, you know, we'll call it pepsi when we're on
the phone.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Okay. There was also the Victorian backslang, which that was
not cocky rhyming slang. That was just pronouncing words backwards,
sort of simple yob for boy. Yes.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
But something interesting about that is that it's based on
the spelling, not the pronunciation, right, which suggests a strong
degree of literacy, which you would probably not have found
among at least the powderers, right, probably among the chanters
because they were writing songs and ballads, so it's possible
they came up with that too, But they think maybe
(27:22):
it was Butcher's and Butcher's assistants who came up with backslang.
Oh really yeah, and actually two confused customers or to
be able to talk about what price they should charge
a customer in front of the customer.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Right.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
So there is like you take all these different pieces
and you get the current idea and story for cockney
rhyming slang, but it's actually a bunch of different stuff. Yeah,
that wasn't really all connected until later on.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Yeah, what it probably also was not was Irish stock workers.
There was one theory being bandied about that Irish stock
workers would come over and they would speak in this
made up rhyming slang, so you know, they could just
talk among their Irish peers and the people of London
wouldn't understand them. Not much of this makes any sense
at all, No, because they don't. I think. Now you
(28:10):
see it some in Ireland, but for all those years
that it was prevalent in London, it was not in Ireland.
Right unless they literally just made it up when they
came over from Ireland.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Right, Plus, why would they not just speak Irish in
front of the English who might not speak it?
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Or what would that be Gaelic?
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Sure? I think So we're getting so much of this wrong.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Do you want to take a break in fact check
everything and maybe just rewind and start over.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Yeah, let's let's get our Wait, what was facts?
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Our brass tacks? That's right, So we got to go
get our brass straight.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (28:49):
Salvation no selevsion, No, Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
It's been about thirty minutes since we left you guys.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
We fact checked everything and so far, so good. Yeah,
this is a perfect podcast. So you said at the beginning,
you teased out that it might not even have been
Cockney to begin with. Everything I saw kind of placed
it in that east. I think they call it Cheapside,
really area wow, where the cockneys were, but Cockney was also,
(29:33):
I mean it's also not necessarily specifically one place, right.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
No, But if you're talking about Cockney people, supposedly the
definition of a Cockney person is someone who was born
within hearing distance of the bells of Saint Mary Lebaux
in Cheapside, which was in London. With this guy, John
Camden Houghton, who was writing in eighteen sixty and placed
the place the origin of rhyming slang well the fifteen
(30:00):
years before. So this guy was like on top of
it as it was happening. Yeah, he placed it at
a place called Seven Dials, which is like a big
market place and I think still is, which is a
mile and a half away from Cheapside, which at the
time was in Westminster at the time a different town, right,
So you had City of London and then Westminster, which
(30:20):
is where seven Dials was. So if if you believe Hoton,
then it wasn't the Cockney at all who came up
with that. It was just powders and Shaan tours. That's
a different word than I said, No, Shawn Tours.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Well, Cockney has. What that is though, is just sort
of the working class. I think used to be viewed
as uneducated, sort of lower class. That may be a
bit harsh, but if anything, it was not the upper
crust of British society. You know, the pub the hard
drinking pubgoers, rub a dub dub goers. Is that pubs?
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah, which is another extent because you go from one
one syllable pub to rub a dub dub and it
actually has three rhymes in there. Oh interesting, But that
is Cockney rhyming slang for pub.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Well, but the Cockneys were also known for a bit
more progressive politics, and I think nowadays there can be
a bit more of a of a pride of like
a working class pride associated with it.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
I think there was back then too, was there? But
I think that's one reason also why the Cockney accent
and Cockney rhyming slang in particular was just treated shabbily
and looked down on, you know, by the rest of England,
right because it was supposedly, you know, associated with the
lower classes.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Yeah, it also found its way to Australia, isn't that right?
And then somehow on the West Coast of America where
the Australian version came in.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Yeah, in the prisons of the West Coast in the US,
it was called Australian rhyming slang. So I guess some
cool guy from Australia showed up and was speaking in Gibberish.
That just made everyone think I want to do this too, right.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
It's kind of fun to go on YouTube though and
see some of these, you know, because it's such a
big thing in England. It's been all over the BBC.
I watched one episode of the Two Ronnies where this
priest did a sermon and Cockney rhyming slang. It's very
funny and one of those sort of you know, eighties
I guess it was eighties, early eighties. BBC comedies are
always fun, you know. The production value is not all there.
(32:31):
The laugh track is it had to have been a
laugh track. I don't think it was a studio audience,
although it may have been.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
It was hard to tell. That's during the transition. But
there were other shows not on Your Nelly and The
Sweeney and the titles of both of those shows come
from actual Cockney rhyming slang as well.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Yeah, the Sweeney is particularly dense. It's short for Sweeney Todd,
which was rhyming slang for flying Squad, which is a
particular branch of the Metapolitan Police, kind of like Major Case.
So the Sweeney was like the Major Case division of
Metropolitan Police.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
So Nelly comes from the word Nelly Duff, the name
Nelly Duff, which is apparently just a nonsense name, and
that rhymes with puff, which means life. So not on
your Nelly means not on your life. Yeah, clearly it's
so dense. And then of course things like you mentioned
the guy Ritchie really brought it into the American consciousness
(33:29):
in the nineties when he made those two movies, and.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
He brought it into my consciousness. I'll tell you that.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Yeah. Sure.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
So there's a really good question, Chuck, that I think
we need to ask. How is it that in twenty
nineteen you and I are analyzing a hyper local slang
that came out of the eighteen forties in some very
specific part of London, Like, how is Cogney rhyming slang
(34:00):
still around after all this year? All these years, when
so much other slang has come and gone over the
years that we have no idea ever even existed. What's
the same power of Cockney rhyming slang?
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Do you expect me to have an answer? Yeap, I
don't have one about why it's stuck around other than people.
You know, if people don't still use it, then it
would have fallen by the wayside. So clearly it's popular. Yeah,
it seems to have gotten and maybe this is just
my recognition of it, but it seems to have gotten
more popular in the last twenty years.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
What I was reading is that, especially in the UK,
it's popularity is based on kitchiness. Yeah, you know, kind
of like hipster irony. Like the Cockney rhyming word for
wife is trouble and strife. So I imagine that probably doesn't
go over very well if you don't call your wife
that with a smile like you're joking, right, kind of thing.
(34:49):
So I think that's the that's the current use of it.
But I mean it's it was used and it's still
in use, and there's still new words like passen becks
is is the word for sex?
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Oh? Really, that's pretty new. Apparently Britney spears can be
used for beers, which is great. And I saw one
Nelson mandela. If you're getting a Stella artois, yeah, this
is a Nelson Mandela for stella.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
So the fact that it's still evolving, yeah, still being
contributed to new like these existing words are being replaced
with new ones. And the fact that it's one hundred
and fifty years old. I mean, there's got to be
some thing to it that makes it more more. I
think it's that it's just so hard to understand until
(35:38):
someone explains it to you.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
I think it's fun. I think it's a few fold.
It's fun. It's fun. It's fun. It's there is a
code to it, and part of the fun is it
I think his friends maybe trying to make something up
and having it catch on. Sure, it's almost like a game,
like a word game.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Yeah a bit?
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Did you just go a bit? And then the the
the unique britishness of it all, Yeah, has a lot
to do with it. I think.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah, because even though it got exported to Australia, no
one associates it with Australia. Sorry Australia.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
But if we like if it really took off in
America with hipsters. People in Britain would probably be like,
forget it, it's flown the it's flat. Well, what is
flown the coop? What could you say for coop?
Speaker 1 (36:26):
It's it's uh on the Gwyneth and the goop. So
the Gwyneth, it's flown the Gwyneth. Okay, we'll see that.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
One might catch on.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
I can do this all day. Some of them aren't
so good, but other ones are gems.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
The why of it all though, to begin with, I
thought was interesting. I asked you why, and you said
you don't know. You said, why is it sticking around?
I mean, why did it start to begin with?
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Okay, and I think you know. Ed makes a pretty
good point that they're just rhyming. Period has always been
a thing, even in the state, and he uses examples
like see you later, alligator after a whild Crocodisle, Like
I remember saying that when I was a kid. I
just said that yesterday, did you really? Yeah, see you later, alligator. Yeah.
There's just something about it. Maybe it's the childlike nature
(37:13):
of it that's fun. It makes old people feel young again.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Yeah, it's I mean, like it takes something boring and
adds a little flair to it, you know.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Or like Yiddish, like fancy shmancy. I love that people
say that kind of stuff all the time. I never
associated it with Yiddish, but it absolutely is, isn't it.
I think so. I mean, not outright Yiddish, but Yiddish culture.
I think so. But yeah, it is strange. It is
strange that it started to begin with, and like I
(37:43):
wish there was a definite like person zero that we
could point to. Yeah, and you know, on the streets
of London and someone thought it was funny and then
they told two friends and so on and so on.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Yep, really it's not. Richie started it and Patsy and
Ralph Mouth took it from there and it just kept
spreading like wildfire.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
You got anything else? Yes?
Speaker 1 (38:06):
I found a twenty twelve survey by the Museum of
London and it set off a bunch of articles about
how Cockney Ryeman's slang is dying. But if you read
the article, it says that forty percent of respondents believe
it was dying, which means sixty percent don't believe it's dying. Yeah,
so yeah, And then they go on to talk about
(38:28):
how there's all these new words that are being replaced
and added, so I don't think it's going anywhere. I
think it's usage just become more ironic and everything. But
it's still like most most Britains still understand porky pies
means lies. Yeah, like don't tell me any porky's, give
it to me straight.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
Well, I think it was good we were able to
sit here and have a good rabbit in pork sure
or torque. Apparently rabbit and pork is talk.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
But oh, that was one other thing the studying this.
There's reasons people study this. It gives you a window
into the past.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
For example, like pronunciations yes, uh huh.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
So farthing used to be a Camden well farthings like
a quarter penny that they don't use anymore, but it
used to be called a Camden after Camden gardens, which
tells linguists if they would get off their dusts and
study this thing that they used to pronounce farthings as fardins. Oh, interesting,
or at least it's something that rhyme closely to gardens.
(39:30):
But that's why people study this allegedly amazing. Well, if
you want to know more about Cockney rhyming slang. Get
yourself a great Cockney rhyming dictionary and go to England
and just start talking up a storm.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
They love that stuff. They love they can't get enough.
They'll treat you like one of their own. That's right.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
And since we said that it's time for listener mate.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
Satanic Panic, can we just re release that as a
Saturday select? I think that was Was that one of
your picture one of mine? I don't know, I'm not sure,
but it was. It was a good pick for October.
One of our favorite episodes. Yeah, I think of all time.
And we got a lot of people emailing again about
it after listening to it for the first time. Hey, guys,
(40:11):
listened to Satan and Panic and realized had a story
about that. I grew up in a suburb of California.
By the teenageers, i'd become what you might call goth.
Wore black spike, jewelry, dark makeup and all that stuff.
My town had a ten pm curfew, and one night
when I was fourteen, my friends and I were walking
home after curfew got pulled over by the cops. They
questioned and searched us, then called the parents. Except for
mine I'm not sure why, but the officer insisted on
(40:34):
driving me home. Once there, he also demanded to come
inside my home. I was too scared to argue, so
I let him in. He went to my bedroom. This
is getting creepy. I was really worried about where this
was headed. He went to my bedroom, which was full
of posters of Marilyn Manson and the Crow and stuff
like that, and he started going through my things. What
he told me he was concerned because Satanists are out
(40:56):
there and that if I wasn't careful, I'd find myself sacrificed.
He told me there were rituals and barns that require virgins,
and I should rethink my lifestyle before I got raped
or hurt. I thanked him for his concern, and I
quietly said everything nice that I could to get him
out of my house before he woke up my father situation.
This happened in two thousand. After hearing your episode today,
(41:18):
it's hard to believe that the residue of the Satanic
panic would still be around then, especially in the police force.
Just to be clear, the suburb I lived in had
very little crime, so the officer was very surprising. Indeed,
my boys and I love your show. I recommend it
to everyone. Nice. That is from Lisa G. There's really something, Lisa,
(41:39):
I know, kind of disturbing. Yeah, Like I don't know
if that cop was a good guy. I don't know.
It started to go down a pretty creepy road there,
it really did.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yeah, maybe he was just looking for some pod or something.
He was just coming up with a cover story.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
I got to get in your room and go through
your stuff. You got any weed? Yeah? Really? I was
relieved to know that it just ended in the cop leaving.
But yeah, agreed, he went above and beyond and not
in a good way.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Right. Well, thanks a lot, Lisa, and glad that you
made it through that and that you and your boys
are listening to Stuff you Should Know. Could you get
any cooler? I don't think so. Well, if you want
to be cool like Lisa Ander boys, you can get
in touch with this by going on to Stuff you
Should Know, checking out our social links there, and as always,
send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Hey, everybody, it's your old pal Josh. And for this
week's select, I've chosen our episode from November of twenty
nineteen on Cockney rhyming slang. This is one of those
silly episodes that's also packed with a lot of interesting information.
And I remember Chuck and I having fun making yet
so I hope you'll enjoy listening to it too.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Enjoy Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles w Chuck Bryant right there. There's Jerry Rowland
right there. So that makes this stuff you should know
right in. That's it for me. Can't top that.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I was trying to think a way to say welcome
to the podcast and cockney rhyming slang. Can you make
an intense My brain is are broken right now. I
can't even try.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Okay, good, good, well, welcome.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
It's a good good time to record a show, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
You're gonna do some cocknye in here, right. We want
to offend as many Londoners as we can.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
I don't know, just just channel a little Dick Van Dyke.
Oh you know, Yeah, the American.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Doing a bad Cockney accent.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Well, I did recently rewatch The Limey.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yes, for Casey's Benefits.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Yeah, the great, great movie from Steven Soderberg.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Never seen it.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
It's awesome, is it really? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I mean I know it's like a classic and everybody
loves it, but I mean it's really that good? Huh Yeah,
because a lot of people liked I don't know, The Hangover.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I like the Hangover?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Well, how would you? How would you like The Linemy
and the Hangover? Same level?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yeah, they're the same movie almost all right, it's weird.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Well, then I've seen The Hangover, so I don't need
to see the Limy.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
No, the Lemmy's great and Terrence Stamp is awesome, and
it and uses some Cockney rhymings in one great scene.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
My big exposure to Cockney rhyming slang is Lockstock in
Two Smoking Barrels Snatch, Yeah, which I think are both
directed by Guy Ritchie. Right, wasn't Lockstock like his first
attempt in Snatch was the one that like got him
married to Madonna?
Speaker 3 (02:17):
You a fan of Hits?
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah? I mean as much as I like his movies,
I don't like him personally necessarily because he like hunts,
bore like a jackass.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
And stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah, like drunk with his friends in the most like
disrespectful way of murdering a pig.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
I've meant his movies, but yeah, I do like his
movie sounds like he's a creep too.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
I'm not going to go on record saying that, but
you know.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Uh, yeah, those movies are okay. And then I guess, uh,
what's his name? Don Cheatle a little bit in Ocean's eleven. Sure,
he did a little bit of.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
That, right, And I mean like it's code to Americans,
it's oh, there's like a criminal, a British criminal, right,
that's all that means these days?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Yeah, I think so. In movies, it's definitely like all
of those are criminal, criminal people in the movie.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
But they're like, you know, kind of slick, cool criminals
that like boil leather coats and stuff like that, not
dumb criminals that were like football jerseys or anything like that.
They're like, you know, smooth criminals. That's I think what
I was looking for. Yeah, but this idea of associating
it with Cockney is not necessarily associating it with criminals.
It's more associated with like lower class, working class, less educated, definitely,
(03:31):
not the aristocracy over in Britain.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Yeah, or the upper class.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Sure, And that by speaking with a Cockney accent, or
more to the point, using Cockney rhyming slang, you could
really differentiate yourself to it as a point of pride,
like you were speaking like your group. You're in group,
which was at the time Cockney. But the big surprise
to all this is it's really possible and even probable
(03:56):
that it wasn't the Cockney that came up with this
rhyming slang, that it was somebody else altogether.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Maybe who knows? Should we say what it is?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
No, not for the rest of the podcast.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Cockney rhyming slang. It wasn't even very clearly defined in
this piece. Okay, did do you think it was? It's
in there, Okay. You got to just kind of separate
the wheat from the chaff. So it is a two
word phrase. It is a slang phrase consisting of two
(04:30):
words or the last word of that phrase rhymes with
the original word. And it can be and I think
the best way to do this is just to throw
out a few no, no, keep describing well, the two
word phrase. It can be. It can be a lot
of things. It can be a person's name, it can
be just something random. It can be a place, could
be a place, It could be a lot of things.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
It can be anything.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Yeah, sure, I guess it can be m But shall
we illustrate it through.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Well, there's a second part to it too, Ok, the
second part, and this is very important. The two word
phrase that you're using to that where the second word
rhymes with the word you're actually saying.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Yeah, the original word, the original word thank.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
You, usually has nothing to do with it. There's no metaphor,
there's no connection, there's no nothing, there's no there's no
context to it. It's supposed to just be random or
in most cases it is just random words, right, one
of which rhymes with the word you're replacing.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
And to further complicate things, Sure, in a lot of cases,
and no one knows why. Sometimes this happens, and sometimes
it doesn't a lot of times that one of the
words of the two word phrase is dropped yep, and
then you're just left with the one word which doesn't
even rhyme with the original word anymore. Right.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
That's I mean, that's probably the best description of cockney
rhyming slaying anyone's ever given.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
So I think we should illustrate it with a couple
of examples. I pulled some from from some thing called
the Internet.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Here here's one, the the tip and tet. That's how
long it took me to come up.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
With that tip and tet for the Internet.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
But in ten years it'll just be called the tip.
I'm going to log onto the tip Governor.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
So let's say your word was, and this was in
Ocean's eleven, specifically, trouble is the word that you're trying
to say. Cockney rhyming slang for trouble is Barney rubble awesome,
And so you would say you're making a bit of
the Bonnie rubbled again.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Right when somebody that was kind of who was.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
That making a bit of Bonnie rubble? Not the see
I already did it wrong.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
No, but I think that like a real person to
an American for sure. Oh yeah, I can't, I can't.
I'll shout it out later.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Man, I finally did a good one. We just I
just don't know who.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
But it wasn't a Cockney person, is okay.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Another example for Queen, they would use the term baked bean.
Look it is on TV, it's the baked bean, right,
and that's the queen. Or in the case of one
that's been dropped, what does ed use here? Bees and honey?
Speaker 1 (07:15):
That one is not dropped for money?
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Oh okay? But which one was apples and pears for stairs? Right?
Speaker 1 (07:22):
So you would say I'm going to go up the
apple and stairs apples and pears? Oh man, let me
retake this. Everybody. You would say, I'm going to go
up the apples and pears to go get my wallet
to pay for this pizza, or something to that effect.
But then over time people drop the pears, and so
(07:44):
now the word for stairs in Cockney rhyming slang is
just apples, which, if you're just standing there on the
outside like a normal American bloke, sure, by the way,
it means person. You have no idea why this person
just called stairs apples. You got what they were saying,
because the context is there, you're going up the apples
(08:04):
to get your wallet to pay for the pizza. But
why would you just say that? Did you did you
hit your head? Is there something wrong with you? What's
the problem? Why would you just call that apples? Yeah,
that's why it's so confounding. But the great thing about
cockney rhyming slang, and in particular the great thing about
researching cockney rhyming slang, is you learn how you get
from apples to stairs, and then it makes sense. Sometimes yeah,
(08:30):
it's true, it's not always.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yeah, sometimes there's uh, it's it's not documented, which Ed
points out as one of the problems. Sometimes you can
draw the line the through line, but because it's not documented,
and sometimes these things take years and years to morph
into its final version. Right unless you unless you're you know,
on the uh, what would you call streets on the door?
(08:56):
Now on the streets, then you wouldn't know. But I
don't know what streets is. You can it just makes
stuff up, Like there's real words.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
On the drums and beats, so got the drums.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Right, but they probably have a word for streets. Like
that's the whole point. You can't just make anything up
but the but you could if it hasn't been taken yet.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Sure. But also that's the other thing about cockney rhyming
slang is it evolves, right, so old celebrities that no
one even knows about anymore fall away to new celebrities
whose name also rhyme with you know whatever word you're saying.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Right, I thought you meant old celebrities who maybe used
to talk this way like Michael Kaine.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
No, he's never said any rhyming slang in his life.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Of course, you got to see the movie Alfie.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Maybe that's who it was. It might have been Michael Kane.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
I don't take that Michael Kaine. I think it was.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
As a matter of fact, Yeah, thank you, I'm glad
you did it.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Noel always says a good joke is to say Michael
Kain in the correct accent, say the words my cocaine.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
And it sounds like Michael Kaine saying it.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Then it sounds like the correct accent for Michael Kaine.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Right, my cocaine.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Well, you just blew that one out.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
You gotta set me up in the future. Now you
haven't recorded seeing my cocaine.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Well there's I've got it two ways now.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Man cocaine.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Here's the thing, my cocaine. That's my cocaine. That's pretty good,
Michael Caine. It is good. You're right, Noel, you just
got to say it the right way and not like
a robot Josh. So here's one of the things that
sort of confounding if you want to look up a
like a glossary and say, well, here's what I'm gonna do.
(10:41):
I'm gonna learn Cockney rhyming slang. So for my trip
to England, I'm really you know, I'm really in with everybody.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Really.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
First of all, bad idea. Second of all, it's it
can be very localized and the accents are all different.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Yeah, so even people in London who who all use well,
people in London don't really do. But the people who
use Cockney rhyming slang in London might not even agree
on what word means.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
What. I'm just picturing all the people walking around England
laughing their arses off.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Oh, I can't wait to get to that one.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
As we stumble through this. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Ed had a really good example of why there's no
codification of the Cockney rhyming slang. He said that when
people are creating a language, especially informal ones like slang,
they don't write it all down. Quote, dear Diary referred
to my house as a cat and mouse today because
it rhymed. We all had a good laugh.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Might try just calling it cat tomorrow and see how
it goes. It is it sounds funny, but that's that's
how it works. Can you stumbling across a diary that
said that? And here's the other thing too, is there
are cases where there is a little bit of a
reflection of the original word. And the example that it
(12:01):
gives here is twist. Yeah, like to call a woman
a twist, which I don't know if that's a derogatory
or not, or just some weird slang that no one
uses anymore.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
I don't think so, although I don't know. So yeah,
these are also the people who use the C word
like it's nothing.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
Well, I can say fanny, oh man, I can't wait
to go back there, which we're gonna do soonest right,
I'd love to do in twenty twenty maybe yeah, all right.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Uh so twist came from twist and twirl, which meant girl,
which is uh they were talking about like dancing with
a girl twisting and twirling in a nightclub.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Let's say, so there is some connection in that one.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Yeah, so girl ended up becoming twist, so that sort
of makes sense.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
There's another one called on your Todd after a guy
named Todd Sloane, and it means on your own right
and The thing is is like On your Todd, it
makes sense Sloan rhymes with own. It doesn't have to
have any connection, but that one actually does. Yeah, because
Todd Sloan was a famous jockey in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Like horse jockey, yes, okay, what other kind is there?
Disc jockeys?
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Oh yeah, sure. So his book, his memoir, was called
Todd Sloane by himself, which is weird to refer to
yourself in third person for your memoir, But there was
a line in it that apparently east Enders in London
like really picked up, I was left alone by those
I never ceased to grieve for, And so like the
(13:30):
idea of being alone or on your own became synonymous
with Todd Sloane. His name just happened to rhyme with that.
So it's one of those rare ones where there is
a connection to it, and also rare chuck in that
this is a nineteenth century horse jockey and still today
On Your Todd is recognized as on your.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Own, whereas a lot of people probably have no idea.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Exactly from who he is. And when that happens that
frequently that person gets moved out for potentially another celebrity
or another word that's a little more understandable. Recognized another
new jockey to people today, Right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Which can you name one?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Nope?
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Nope, all right, maybe we should take a break and
we'll talk about some of the other some other examples
after this message.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
Salvation, no sevision, no.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Okay, we're back. Jerry just opened the loudest sandwich in
the history of the world. Really, she's like, hold on
a minute, and it's sounded like it was in a
space blanket.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
It was like Ernest opens a sandwich over here.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
That was a good one. Not as good as part two.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
No, I saw that first one in the theater.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Yeah. So here's some other examples that have Some of
them have sort of stayed over in England and some
of have found their way, Like apparently the term put
up your dukes. Oh, I didn't know the cockney rhyming slang,
so and I didn't write down where dukes came from.
But that's where it was originally a Cockney rhyming slang term. Yeah,
(15:12):
because so you would think it had to do with
fists or something. Duke's for fists. Why didn't I write
that down?
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Okay, But so That's another really important point to say
about Cockney rhyming slang. It's frequently rhyming slang based on slang,
so the word it's replacing is the slang word to
begin with. So who knows what the dukes actually rhymed
with at any point?
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Yeah, that's a good point. So first of all, I've
never heard this blowing a raspberry. What have you heard
of that? Yeah? That's tooting out of your that what.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
I just did is as much blowing a raspberry as
actually farting.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Oh really? Yeah? Okay, well I've heard of giving someone
a raspberry, like, okay, that's the same thing. Yeah, okay,
Well apparently that's derived from raspberry tart slang for fart.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 3 (16:04):
It's pretty great?
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Yeah, So that one is one of the rare ones
I love talking about exceptions. Do you know that?
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Sure, that's one of the rare ones that made its
way to America because of right, everyone but you knows
what blowing a raspberry is?
Speaker 3 (16:18):
I guess I've never heard of the term blowing, but
giving someone a raspberry same thing.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
I found two more. One is controversial. It's not set
in stone, but it's as good an explanation as any
get down to brass tacks.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
I saw that one too.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
That's a stand in for facts. Let's get down to
the bear facts.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Possibly it's not right done. One that is one hundred percent,
as far as I can tell, is bread.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
I saw that too. For money. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
In America, bread and honey became just bread, right, and
it caught on here and caught on again just now.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Well, bees and honey though, was also for money, right.
Is that just one of the local depends on where
you are things.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Yeah, okay, yeah, but in America, I mean, you know,
we use bread. Everybody calls it bread.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Yeah. I didn't know that that'd come back.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, somebody wrote in to say it had come back.
Let's get this bread right.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
I guess. So that's over familiar.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
You need to spend more time on Reddit.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Here's another one. Dog and bone stands in for phone,
call me on the dog and bone. Sure, And then
Ed says there may be some kind of correlation between
one silver words that lead off that phrase staying in
the phrase, But I don't There are so many exceptions.
I don't know if there is a rule exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
And I think that's really, this is worth saying. We
looked all over the place I know ed did too,
for straight up linguistic dissertations and papers on cockney rhyming slange. Right,
it's not there. No, it's just treated as fun and hilarious,
even though it is its own made up language that's
ever evolving. Still live is around. We'll talk about the
(18:01):
history in a minute for one hundred and fifty plus years.
But apparently no linguist has ever thought enough of it
to sit down and write a genuine paper about it.
So we couldn't find that. But the one thing that
really occurred to me was in looking into it. I
don't know if it could ever be explained. I think
it's the result of so many individual decisions and then
(18:24):
collective agreements to take up and go along with those decisions.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Yeah, and those.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Agreements can be totally undermined by a new individual decision
that catches on how could you possibly map and even
understand all or explain all of that different stuff. But
even though we can't explain it, once you start to
learn how it works, it's understandable. So you can't explain,
but you can't understand it.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
Yeah, and it's like I always wonder with any kind
of slang or like who makes the stuff up, who
sets the rules. It's probably just the kind of thing
that just starts on a playground and spreads from there
and gets codified unofficially. Yep. Then everyone's using it, sure,
but I wonder if they're I don't know. You can't
(19:12):
trace this stuff, which is sort of frustrating as researchers,
because I think we like to pinpoint things.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Yeah, but it I mean people have tried to trace
it and they've come awfully close.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Well, we'll get to that in a minute. Okay, I
want to go over some more of these. All right,
I want to get up on my plates and get out.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Of here your meat, your plates of meat.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Plates of meat, which is feet or between podcasts, you
probably have to go take a rattle. Yep, rattle and hiss,
rattle and hiss like a snake. You got it, And
that's means peep, right exactly. And then I guess we
should talk about ars. Yeah, sure, that's the one you
were pretty excited about.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Yes, because it goes even so much farther than urs
even Yeah, it's pretty convoluted. Okay, you want to take
it no, go ahead, Okay, so ours the very famous
named for ass in the UK. Everybody knows that. Sure,
it's actually it comes from Aristotle, which you're like, well,
what does that have to do with ass? Well, let
(20:11):
me tell you. Aristotle is Cockney rhyming slang for bottle. Again,
the question is what does that have to do with ass? Well.
Originally the Cockney rhyming slang word for ass was bottle
and glass, right, became shortened to bottle. Somebody came along
and rhymed Aristotle with it. That got shortened to aris
(20:32):
and then to Arsey goes even further than that. Oh yeah,
I saw one plaster for ars plaster of Paris, Aris, Aristotle, bottle,
bottle and glass ass. That's how deep that Cockney rhyming
slang has covered up the collective ass of the UK.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Yeah, and again it's like, why you can't You can't
put that in a book and explain it in any
kind of way that makes sense. You got to do
it on a podcast or a paper. You just have
to accept it. It's like, that's how it happened on
the street. I think that's a really good way on
the streets to the east end. Right, right in your cocaine. No,
not your cocaine. They do have. For all that we're
(21:15):
saying about how don't look at glossaries and stuff like that,
they do have dictionaries that you can buy. If you're
a total square, I would guess it's probably not a
cool thing to do. That's like saying, you know, I
want to become a rapper, so let me get a
rhyming dictionary. Although I did have a rhyming dictionary at
one point.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Well, rhyming it's not, you know, just limited to kochne.
We know rhyme, Yeah, which is one assertion ed makes
for why it's popular or so long lasting.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Well, should we talk about some of the theories on
where it originated, because I looked in a bunch of
places and I don't think I mean, I think calling
it theory is a little I think they kind of
know where it came from. They just don't know exactly
why the campaign point it to like on this day,
(22:05):
on this in this place.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Right.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
But it's not a complete mystery though.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
No, they've got it basically localized to about a one
and a half mile area of London and basically down
to the year. It's just exactly where and exactly who's
in exactly why are the real outstanding questions, which is
actually a lot of questions.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Yeah, one of the one of the whys was that
in this one I think doesn't have as much credence now.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
But no, but it's like the most common one.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Right is that you will hear that it was coded
language created by criminals to keep the cops confused as
to what was going on, right, which makes sense in
one way because it certainly could cause confusion, But it
also and I think ed makes a pretty good point
that like, were they, like, were cops just hanging around
overhearing things like why did they feel like they needed
(22:56):
to create this whole language? And cops, if they were
street cops would have figured this stuff out as well,
you know, because it wouldn't have been that big of
a secret. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
There's this guy named Dick Sullivan who wrote an essay
on the Victorian Web which is actually kind of cool, huh,
And he said the street cops would have come from
the same areas and families and neighborhoods that the criminals
would have, so they would have been raised on this
rhyming slang anyway. Sure, So it doesn't really hold up
to scrutiny when you look at it like that. It
(23:27):
was a intentionally created coded language meant to confuse the cops.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Right then. That's not to say it nevertheless wasn't associated
with some kind of criminal underworld East London types.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Yeah, and it almost certainly was taken up by the Cockneys,
but it wasn't necessarily cock news or criminals who came
up with this rhyming slang. To begin with.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
There's this guy named John Camden Hotton, and he wrote
one of the better titled, or at least most directly
titled books I've ever heard of, Colon No, there's not.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
There are a couple commas though a dictionary of modern slang,
Can't and vulgar words used at the present day in
the streets of London, And he has a chapter on
rhyming slang, and he basically says that it was two
groups shaunters and patterers, basically traveling salesmen who would stand
(24:22):
on street corners and hawk their wares and you know,
maybe pick your pocket while you were trying to buy
something from them, and that they came up with Cockney
rhyming slang.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Yeah, and I saw that enough to think that that's
probably true.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah. The Schaunters in particular spoken like singing rhyming language,
so it would.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Have been a pretty quick evolution. Yeah, I think this
one makes a lot of sense. Street criers, I mean,
England and London especially has a long tradition of street
corner barkers and things like this, right. I remember seeing
one myself when I traveled there in the nineties and
I was like, they're still doing this stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
It was like a box in the park where you
can go stand on it, soapbox maybe, I mean that's
where that came from, right, probably, and just you know,
shout your piece. Sure, And then I saw guy doing it
and I thought, what year is this? This is wonderful, right,
it's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
But in particular the Chaunters, they sang and then sold
penny ballads, sheet music of penny ballads that they would
write real quick. After somebody famous died or there was
a train wreck or something, they'd write a ballad about
it and then be out in the corners selling these things.
But because they were singing in rhymes and sing song,
it's a really good bet that these guys were the
(25:34):
ones who originated rhyming slang, but not necessarily for any
kind of intentionally coded language, because that same guy, Dick Sullivan, says,
there's no reason for patterers who sold their you know,
little gigaws or trinkets or whatever. I love that word,
or shaunters who were selling these penny ballads. They worked alone.
(25:57):
There was no need for them to come up with
a coded.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Lange would communicate with one another.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah, in front of a customer who they were ripping off,
because they didn't need to communicate with one another in
front of customers.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Well, I saw that maybe they, you know, could communicate
with each other when customers were around or something.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
I don't know, right, But the other part of that
is that it supposedly flies in the face of how
slang develops, that it's unintentional, right, Like you don't say,
let's come up with a coded language and here's how
it works.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Yeah, even like American teenagers when they have slang that
their parents don't understand, Like you remember how that stuff went.
It was something you just heard. You never sat around. Sure,
I'm hip to that and said, you know, like, hey,
let's use this other word that our parents won't know
what it means.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Right, you know, we'll call it pepsi when we're on
the phone.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Okay. There was also the Victorian backslang, which that was
not cocky rhyming slang. That was just pronouncing words backwards,
sort of simple yob for boy. Yes.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
But something interesting about that is that it's based on
the spelling, not the pronunciation, right, which suggests a strong
degree of literacy, which you would probably not have found
among at least the powderers, right, probably among the chanters
because they were writing songs and ballads, so it's possible
they came up with that too, But they think maybe
(27:22):
it was Butcher's and Butcher's assistants who came up with backslang.
Oh really yeah, and actually two confused customers or to
be able to talk about what price they should charge
a customer in front of the customer.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Right.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
So there is like you take all these different pieces
and you get the current idea and story for cockney
rhyming slang, but it's actually a bunch of different stuff. Yeah,
that wasn't really all connected until later on.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Yeah, what it probably also was not was Irish stock workers.
There was one theory being bandied about that Irish stock
workers would come over and they would speak in this
made up rhyming slang, so you know, they could just
talk among their Irish peers and the people of London
wouldn't understand them. Not much of this makes any sense
at all, No, because they don't. I think. Now you
(28:10):
see it some in Ireland, but for all those years
that it was prevalent in London, it was not in Ireland.
Right unless they literally just made it up when they
came over from Ireland.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Right, Plus, why would they not just speak Irish in
front of the English who might not speak it?
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Or what would that be Gaelic?
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Sure? I think So we're getting so much of this wrong.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Do you want to take a break in fact check
everything and maybe just rewind and start over.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Yeah, let's let's get our Wait, what was facts?
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Our brass tacks? That's right, So we got to go
get our brass straight.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (28:49):
Salvation no selevsion, No, Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
It's been about thirty minutes since we left you guys.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
We fact checked everything and so far, so good. Yeah,
this is a perfect podcast. So you said at the beginning,
you teased out that it might not even have been
Cockney to begin with. Everything I saw kind of placed
it in that east. I think they call it Cheapside,
really area wow, where the cockneys were, but Cockney was also,
(29:33):
I mean it's also not necessarily specifically one place, right.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
No, But if you're talking about Cockney people, supposedly the
definition of a Cockney person is someone who was born
within hearing distance of the bells of Saint Mary Lebaux
in Cheapside, which was in London. With this guy, John
Camden Houghton, who was writing in eighteen sixty and placed
the place the origin of rhyming slang well the fifteen
(30:00):
years before. So this guy was like on top of
it as it was happening. Yeah, he placed it at
a place called Seven Dials, which is like a big
market place and I think still is, which is a
mile and a half away from Cheapside, which at the
time was in Westminster at the time a different town, right,
So you had City of London and then Westminster, which
(30:20):
is where seven Dials was. So if if you believe Hoton,
then it wasn't the Cockney at all who came up
with that. It was just powders and Shaan tours. That's
a different word than I said, No, Shawn Tours.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Well, Cockney has. What that is though, is just sort
of the working class. I think used to be viewed
as uneducated, sort of lower class. That may be a
bit harsh, but if anything, it was not the upper
crust of British society. You know, the pub the hard
drinking pubgoers, rub a dub dub goers. Is that pubs?
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah, which is another extent because you go from one
one syllable pub to rub a dub dub and it
actually has three rhymes in there. Oh interesting, But that
is Cockney rhyming slang for pub.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Well, but the Cockneys were also known for a bit
more progressive politics, and I think nowadays there can be
a bit more of a of a pride of like
a working class pride associated with it.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
I think there was back then too, was there? But
I think that's one reason also why the Cockney accent
and Cockney rhyming slang in particular was just treated shabbily
and looked down on, you know, by the rest of England,
right because it was supposedly, you know, associated with the
lower classes.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Yeah, it also found its way to Australia, isn't that right?
And then somehow on the West Coast of America where
the Australian version came in.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Yeah, in the prisons of the West Coast in the US,
it was called Australian rhyming slang. So I guess some
cool guy from Australia showed up and was speaking in Gibberish.
That just made everyone think I want to do this too, right.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
It's kind of fun to go on YouTube though and
see some of these, you know, because it's such a
big thing in England. It's been all over the BBC.
I watched one episode of the Two Ronnies where this
priest did a sermon and Cockney rhyming slang. It's very
funny and one of those sort of you know, eighties
I guess it was eighties, early eighties. BBC comedies are
always fun, you know. The production value is not all there.
(32:31):
The laugh track is it had to have been a
laugh track. I don't think it was a studio audience,
although it may have been.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
It was hard to tell. That's during the transition. But
there were other shows not on Your Nelly and The
Sweeney and the titles of both of those shows come
from actual Cockney rhyming slang as well.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Yeah, the Sweeney is particularly dense. It's short for Sweeney Todd,
which was rhyming slang for flying Squad, which is a
particular branch of the Metapolitan Police, kind of like Major Case.
So the Sweeney was like the Major Case division of
Metropolitan Police.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
So Nelly comes from the word Nelly Duff, the name
Nelly Duff, which is apparently just a nonsense name, and
that rhymes with puff, which means life. So not on
your Nelly means not on your life. Yeah, clearly it's
so dense. And then of course things like you mentioned
the guy Ritchie really brought it into the American consciousness
(33:29):
in the nineties when he made those two movies, and.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
He brought it into my consciousness. I'll tell you that.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Yeah. Sure.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
So there's a really good question, Chuck, that I think
we need to ask. How is it that in twenty
nineteen you and I are analyzing a hyper local slang
that came out of the eighteen forties in some very
specific part of London, Like, how is Cogney rhyming slang
(34:00):
still around after all this year? All these years, when
so much other slang has come and gone over the
years that we have no idea ever even existed. What's
the same power of Cockney rhyming slang?
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Do you expect me to have an answer? Yeap, I
don't have one about why it's stuck around other than people.
You know, if people don't still use it, then it
would have fallen by the wayside. So clearly it's popular. Yeah,
it seems to have gotten and maybe this is just
my recognition of it, but it seems to have gotten
more popular in the last twenty years.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
What I was reading is that, especially in the UK,
it's popularity is based on kitchiness. Yeah, you know, kind
of like hipster irony. Like the Cockney rhyming word for
wife is trouble and strife. So I imagine that probably doesn't
go over very well if you don't call your wife
that with a smile like you're joking, right, kind of thing.
(34:49):
So I think that's the that's the current use of it.
But I mean it's it was used and it's still
in use, and there's still new words like passen becks
is is the word for sex?
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Oh? Really, that's pretty new. Apparently Britney spears can be
used for beers, which is great. And I saw one
Nelson mandela. If you're getting a Stella artois, yeah, this
is a Nelson Mandela for stella.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
So the fact that it's still evolving, yeah, still being
contributed to new like these existing words are being replaced
with new ones. And the fact that it's one hundred
and fifty years old. I mean, there's got to be
some thing to it that makes it more more. I
think it's that it's just so hard to understand until
(35:38):
someone explains it to you.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
I think it's fun. I think it's a few fold.
It's fun. It's fun. It's fun. It's there is a
code to it, and part of the fun is it
I think his friends maybe trying to make something up
and having it catch on. Sure, it's almost like a game,
like a word game.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Yeah a bit?
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Did you just go a bit? And then the the
the unique britishness of it all, Yeah, has a lot
to do with it. I think.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah, because even though it got exported to Australia, no
one associates it with Australia. Sorry Australia.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
But if we like if it really took off in
America with hipsters. People in Britain would probably be like,
forget it, it's flown the it's flat. Well, what is
flown the coop? What could you say for coop?
Speaker 1 (36:26):
It's it's uh on the Gwyneth and the goop. So
the Gwyneth, it's flown the Gwyneth. Okay, we'll see that.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
One might catch on.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
I can do this all day. Some of them aren't
so good, but other ones are gems.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
The why of it all though, to begin with, I
thought was interesting. I asked you why, and you said
you don't know. You said, why is it sticking around?
I mean, why did it start to begin with?
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Okay, and I think you know. Ed makes a pretty
good point that they're just rhyming. Period has always been
a thing, even in the state, and he uses examples
like see you later, alligator after a whild Crocodisle, Like
I remember saying that when I was a kid. I
just said that yesterday, did you really? Yeah, see you later, alligator. Yeah.
There's just something about it. Maybe it's the childlike nature
(37:13):
of it that's fun. It makes old people feel young again.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Yeah, it's I mean, like it takes something boring and
adds a little flair to it, you know.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Or like Yiddish, like fancy shmancy. I love that people
say that kind of stuff all the time. I never
associated it with Yiddish, but it absolutely is, isn't it.
I think so. I mean, not outright Yiddish, but Yiddish culture.
I think so. But yeah, it is strange. It is
strange that it started to begin with, and like I
(37:43):
wish there was a definite like person zero that we
could point to. Yeah, and you know, on the streets
of London and someone thought it was funny and then
they told two friends and so on and so on.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Yep, really it's not. Richie started it and Patsy and
Ralph Mouth took it from there and it just kept
spreading like wildfire.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
You got anything else? Yes?
Speaker 1 (38:06):
I found a twenty twelve survey by the Museum of
London and it set off a bunch of articles about
how Cockney Ryeman's slang is dying. But if you read
the article, it says that forty percent of respondents believe
it was dying, which means sixty percent don't believe it's dying. Yeah,
so yeah, And then they go on to talk about
(38:28):
how there's all these new words that are being replaced
and added, so I don't think it's going anywhere. I
think it's usage just become more ironic and everything. But
it's still like most most Britains still understand porky pies
means lies. Yeah, like don't tell me any porky's, give
it to me straight.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
Well, I think it was good we were able to
sit here and have a good rabbit in pork sure
or torque. Apparently rabbit and pork is talk.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
But oh, that was one other thing the studying this.
There's reasons people study this. It gives you a window
into the past.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
For example, like pronunciations yes, uh huh.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
So farthing used to be a Camden well farthings like
a quarter penny that they don't use anymore, but it
used to be called a Camden after Camden gardens, which
tells linguists if they would get off their dusts and
study this thing that they used to pronounce farthings as fardins. Oh, interesting,
or at least it's something that rhyme closely to gardens.
(39:30):
But that's why people study this allegedly amazing. Well, if
you want to know more about Cockney rhyming slang. Get
yourself a great Cockney rhyming dictionary and go to England
and just start talking up a storm.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
They love that stuff. They love they can't get enough.
They'll treat you like one of their own. That's right.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
And since we said that it's time for listener mate.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
Satanic Panic, can we just re release that as a
Saturday select? I think that was Was that one of
your picture one of mine? I don't know, I'm not sure,
but it was. It was a good pick for October.
One of our favorite episodes. Yeah, I think of all time.
And we got a lot of people emailing again about
it after listening to it for the first time. Hey, guys,
(40:11):
listened to Satan and Panic and realized had a story
about that. I grew up in a suburb of California.
By the teenageers, i'd become what you might call goth.
Wore black spike, jewelry, dark makeup and all that stuff.
My town had a ten pm curfew, and one night
when I was fourteen, my friends and I were walking
home after curfew got pulled over by the cops. They
questioned and searched us, then called the parents. Except for
mine I'm not sure why, but the officer insisted on
(40:34):
driving me home. Once there, he also demanded to come
inside my home. I was too scared to argue, so
I let him in. He went to my bedroom. This
is getting creepy. I was really worried about where this
was headed. He went to my bedroom, which was full
of posters of Marilyn Manson and the Crow and stuff
like that, and he started going through my things. What
he told me he was concerned because Satanists are out
(40:56):
there and that if I wasn't careful, I'd find myself sacrificed.
He told me there were rituals and barns that require virgins,
and I should rethink my lifestyle before I got raped
or hurt. I thanked him for his concern, and I
quietly said everything nice that I could to get him
out of my house before he woke up my father situation.
This happened in two thousand. After hearing your episode today,
(41:18):
it's hard to believe that the residue of the Satanic
panic would still be around then, especially in the police force.
Just to be clear, the suburb I lived in had
very little crime, so the officer was very surprising. Indeed,
my boys and I love your show. I recommend it
to everyone. Nice. That is from Lisa G. There's really something, Lisa,
(41:39):
I know, kind of disturbing. Yeah, Like I don't know
if that cop was a good guy. I don't know.
It started to go down a pretty creepy road there,
it really did.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yeah, maybe he was just looking for some pod or something.
He was just coming up with a cover story.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
I got to get in your room and go through
your stuff. You got any weed? Yeah? Really? I was
relieved to know that it just ended in the cop leaving.
But yeah, agreed, he went above and beyond and not
in a good way.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Right. Well, thanks a lot, Lisa, and glad that you
made it through that and that you and your boys
are listening to Stuff you Should Know. Could you get
any cooler? I don't think so. Well, if you want
to be cool like Lisa Ander boys, you can get
in touch with this by going on to Stuff you
Should Know, checking out our social links there, and as always,
send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Josh Clark
Chuck Bryant
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