“Use your loaf” for “Use your head.” Head > Bread: Bread is a loaf.
“Take a Butcher’s” for “Take a look.” Look > Hook: Butchers hang meat on hooks.
I tried one of my own… “Chime” for “Hell.” Hell > Bell: a Chime is a bell. But my advisor said, “No, this is totally wrong.”
Okay… Why is it wrong? He couldn’t make himself clear. Is Chime too close a synonym for Bell? (And, anyway, my advisor is no more a Cockney than I am!)
It’s not just an associated word, it’s a word used in a phrase.
Loaf of bread - head.
Butcher’s hook - look.
Cobbler’s awls - balls.
And so on.
Then you drop the actual rhyming word in usual use, so you end up with ‘use your loaf’, ‘take a butchers’, ‘that’s a load of cobblers’ and so on.
Chimes and bell don’t go well in a phrase like that.
‘Church bell’ would fit the pattern, and make an ironic substitution for Hell.
You’re missing an important element: Cockney rhyming slang is based on a rhyme, usually using a two or three word phrase with a stressed-unstressed-stressed rhythm.
First you create a rhyme for that phrase: “head” is rhymed with “loaf of bread”
Then you drop the words that rhyme (and any connecting word): loaf
Similarly: “look” rhymes with “Butcher’s hook,” which reduces to “butcher’s.”
Thus there’s no rhyming connection in your example. You might try “Cloister Bell” for “hell” and then cut that down to “cloister.”
Coo! At Ruk said on Star Trek, “THAT WAS THE EQUATION!” I didn’t catch that it was a full phrase; I had thought it was just an associative jump.
Thank’ee! (I like “Cloister!”)
You can also link them.
Plaster is short for “plaster of paris” which rhymes with “aris.” “Aris” is short for Aristotle, which rhymes with bottle. Bottle is short for “bottle and glass,” which rhymes with arse. Hence, the statement often heard in winter in London: “Ooh! I slipped on that patch of ice and landed right on me plaster!”
That’s according to Bill Bryson, as I recall, so take it with a grain of salt.
That one seems implausibly complicated, but a real one is boracic, meaning broke:
Boracic lint — skint
Boracic lint being a wound dressing impregnated with boric acid for its antiseptic properties (and once in common use), and “skint” being itself a slang word for broke.
I agree with RealityChuck that the little rhyming phrase needs to have that certain rhythm.
Actually, this site rates examples of rhyming slang for authenticity. I could not find your example. (It might be there but require registration because of “obscenity”, but registration does not seem to be implemented.) However, I did see this picture on the site, which suggests you may be right after all. To explain, in Britain, "plaster is also an old fashioned word for (something like a) band aid. The picture is a cartoon of a guy with a plaster on his arse.
And note that “boracic” is usually pronounced “brassic” with a short a.
“Aris” I have certainly seen used for “arse” as suggested above, so it’s possible that over the years a still more obscure redirect has been added.
I’ve heard of a couple of claimed examples of CRS that are in (somewhat) common use in the US of A:
bread - bread and honey - money (and it’s said that “dough” derives from this)
duke (as in “put up your dukes”) - duke of york - fork (a fork resembling a hand)
Are these correct? Are there others?
I’m moderately cockney, born in Sarf London. Rhyming slang has to be a sort of cross between a joke and crossword clue. Someone else who knows how rhyming slang works should be able to get it even if they hadn’t heard it before, but it shouldn’t be too obvious and it should also be slightly humorous. For example “It’s my round, who wants a Britney?” would be an example of a newer rhyming slang.
raspberry (as in “blow a raspberry”) - raspberry tart - fart
According to the crowdsourced ratings at http://www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk, all these except “Britney” are probably genuine examples of classic rhyming slang, and even “Britney” seems to be accepted by by a plurality as a genuine “modern” example, in real use (as opposed to “mockney”, an example made up, probably for a joke, but never used in practice). However, the fact that almost as many people rate “Britney” as “classic” as as “modern” or “mockney” makes me rather dubious about the reliability of the ratings. Clearly it cannot be old enough to be considered remotely “classic”.
I think I’m going to need a cite that “Britney” is not old-timey rhyming slang;)
I like “Who wants a Britney!”
How would you do “Hell?” Is there a standard CRS “Hell” out there?
I’d never known those origins for “dough” and “dukes.”
I’d certainly always been of the opinion that these were just a little too complicated to be figured out on one’s own; they generally need to be explained. But, of course, that’s the fun of it: having a “private jargon.” It’s half lingo, half secret code!
Arguments over what is really rhyming slang notwithstanding (the truth is that rhyming slang these days is used in a way that many people would call “Mockney”)Cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk has “Ding-dong bell” and “Jimmy Nail” for “Hell”. The first may or may not be old slang, the second is definitely new. “Jimmy Nail” would be more obvious rhyming slang for “nail” though: i.e. “Uve 'it the Jimmy on the 'ead me old China”
Ask this guy.
I think I’ll revive this thread in five years. By then it will be a Trafalgar.
Is there even a distinct Cockney culture any more? I would have thought that modern mass media and transportation would have melded it with at least a much larger area of London.
Er…can you explain Jimmy Nail and how you get from there to hell?
(“Disrespect yer parents is a good start…”)
Okay, I almost never watch linked YouTube vids. Damn, that was milk an’ honey!
One bump, and then I’ll just go away quietly…
I Googled, and found several allusions to this, but none of them explained the sequence of rhymes.
