# Cockney Rhyming Slang Rules? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 7, 2013, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cockney-rhyming-slang-rules/675725 "2013-12-07T03:09:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cockney-rhyming-slang-rules/675725/41 "2013-12-11T02:15:57Z")
> [@SanVito](#): > > There’s this notion that a true Cockney must be born with the sound of Bow Bells – the bells of St Mary Le Bow in Cheapside in the City of London, a very small area. This area is now London’s equivalent of Wall Street and is full of offices, so you would really struggle to find _anyone_ who has been born there in the last 50 years, much less a traditional market trader. I question this, even though you have Wikipedia on your side. My mother, a Londoner born and bred (though not a cockney), told me the bells in question were those of St Mary and Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, Bow, in what is now Tower Hamlets. This is the east-end, the working class area of London where cockney culture was truly centred. Cockneys were not from the city, which has long been relatively prosperous and much more full of businesses than residential; they were from the poor east-end. I was also told that, in the aftermath of WWII no true cockneys were born because the church had been bombed and the bells silenced (again, referring to St Marys church in Bow, not St Mary _le_ Bow in the city). I am not sure, however, which of these churches (if either) housed “the great bell of bow” mentioned in the song _Oranges and Lemons_. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cockney-rhyming-slang-rules/675725/42 "2013-12-11T02:59:22Z")
> [@stui\_magpie](#): > > While the derivation of “Pom” may be lost, all Aussies have no doubt what it means now. Soap avoiding, crooked toothed, pasty, flabby, whinging citizen of England. . . . Her Majesty excepted, o’ course… 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cockney-rhyming-slang-rules/675725/43 "2013-12-11T08:29:37Z")
> [@vontsira](#): > > The general picture I get, is that acronym-based folk etymology from any time predating World War II, is almost certain to be fallacious. That’s generally my understanding too, although I believe there are a few genuine examples predating WWII. ANZAC (Australia & New Zealand Army Corps) is from World War I, for example. I’m not aware of any English-use acronyms in any sense we’d recognise them (with the exceptions of AM/PM, BC/AD and OK) from before the first two-thirds of the 19th Century or so, however. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cockney-rhyming-slang-rules/675725/44 "2013-12-11T08:55:34Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > That’s generally my understanding too, although I believe there are a few genuine examples predating WWII. ANZAC (Australia & New Zealand Army Corps) is from World War I, for example. > > I’m not aware of any English-use acronyms in any sense we’d recognise them (with the exceptions of AM/PM, BC/AD and OK) from before the first two-thirds of the 19th Century or so, however. If you’re going to count any string of initials as an acronym, then acronyms are very ancient. (SPQR, anyone?) What is modern is a string of intials (or intial syllables) stuck together _and pronounced as a word_ - laser, radar, scuba, Nabisco, Benelux. AM, PM, BC, AD and OK do not fall into this category. Pom, were it an acronym, _would_ fall into this category, but it’s a sufficiently recent coinage (early twentieth century) that it wouldn’t be the oldest such acronym. What puts the kibosh on the idea that it’s an acronym is the fact that the various phrases of which it is supposed to be an acronym (Prisoner of His Majesty, Prisoner of Mother England, Prisoner of Milbank) never had any currency. The convicts were both officially and colloquially referred to as convicts, not prisoners - not least for the reason that, by and large, they weren’t in prison. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cockney-rhyming-slang-rules/675725/45 "2013-12-11T09:00:28Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > If you’re going to count any string of initials as an acronym, then acronyms are very ancient. (SPQR, anyone?) What is modern is a string of intials (or intial syllables) stuck together _and pronounced as a word_ - laser, radar, scuba, Nabisco, Benelux. AM, PM, BC, AD and OK do not fall into this category. Laser, Radar and Scuba are acronyms in the modern sense, though. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![RobDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f07891/32.png) [@RobDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RobDog)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cockney-rhyming-slang-rules/675725/46 "2013-12-11T09:06:53Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > Laser, Radar and Scuba are acronyms in the modern sense, though. 😕 There’s a full stop after Benelux. AM, PM etc is a separate list. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cockney-rhyming-slang-rules/675725/47 "2013-12-11T09:49:42Z")
> [@RobDog](#): > > There’s a full stop after Benelux. AM, PM etc is a separate list. Ah, sorry. Misread it as a comma. Carry on. ---
**Author:** ![vontsira](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/51bf81/32.png) [@vontsira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vontsira)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cockney-rhyming-slang-rules/675725/48 "2013-12-11T13:42:29Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > Pom, were it an acronym, _would_ fall into this category, but it’s a sufficiently recent coinage (early twentieth century) that it wouldn’t be the oldest such acronym. What puts the kibosh on the idea that it’s an acronym is the fact that the various phrases of which it is supposed to be an acronym (Prisoner of His Majesty, Prisoner of Mother England, Prisoner of Milbank) never had any currency. The convicts were both officially and colloquially referred to as convicts, not prisoners - not least for the reason that, by and large, they weren’t in prison. Plus – many of the apocryphal acronym-type explanations for words, strike me as highly stilted and far-fetched: IMO in the main, an expression and its origin must be basically “catchy”, for it to catch on. Would reckon stilted / far-fetched, the above (fallacious anyway) “Prisoner” things. Likewise the origin sometimes suggested, of the regrettable word “wog” for a non-white person: supposedly arising from labourers, locally recruited in the Middle East for British projects in the area, being issued with clothing labelled WOGS, = Worker On Government Service – “Wogs” for short. Feeble and convoluted, to the nth degree… Convicts not prisoners, indeed not in prison: I do gather that the penal settlements were truly not hard to escape from, and escapers were often not vigorously pursued. The catch being, that if you got away; unless you were very hardy, and able quickly to learn bushcraft, and found ways of getting along with the often unpredictable native folk – you were in a worse situation, than if you’d stayed put as a convict. ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cockney-rhyming-slang-rules/675725/49 "2013-12-11T15:02:06Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > I question this, even though you have Wikipedia on your side. My mother, a Londoner born and bred (though not a cockney), told me the bells in question were those of St Mary and Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, Bow, in what is now Tower Hamlets. This is the east-end, the working class area of London where cockney culture was truly centred. Cockneys were not from the city, which has long been relatively prosperous and much more full of businesses than residential; they were from the poor east-end. I was also told that, in the aftermath of WWII no true cockneys were born because the church had been bombed and the bells silenced (again, referring to St Marys church in Bow, not St Mary _le_ Bow in the city). > > I am not sure, however, which of these churches (if either) housed “the great bell of bow” mentioned in the song _Oranges and Lemons_. Don’t agree with this. St Mary Le Bow may now be deep in Banker territory, but it wasn’t always so. The term ‘cockney’ has been used to refer to Londoners since at least the 1600s, referred to as someone born within the sound of Bow Bells, when the City _was_ London, with everything beyond belonging to surrounding counties. The place we now called Bow was just a village on the outskirts of London back then, certainly not the heartland of the East End as we now think of it. Heck, even Hackney was a village on the road out of London back then, and you don’t get anywhere more ‘East End’ these days than Hackney. The descendants of original cockneys were no doubt pushed east as London grew, but that doesn’t make Stratford the traditional heartland of cockneys. [Note that St Mary Le Bow in the City stakes claim to cockney](http://www.stmarylebow.co.uk/) [Bow Church in Bow does not](http://www.bowchurch.webeden.co.uk/our-history/4543297118). ---
**Author:** ![glaeken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@glaeken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glaeken)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cockney-rhyming-slang-rules/675725/50 "2013-12-11T15:20:04Z")
On Pom I have also heard it came from Prisoner of mother England. The problem with that is it only works if you spell it Pome. It’s another explanation I have heard though. It seems fairly unlikely to me. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cockney-rhyming-slang-rules/675725/51 "2013-12-11T15:59:30Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > Try translating this: > _As feely homies, we would zhoosh our riahs, powder our eeks, climb into our bona new drag, don our batts and troll off to some bona bijou bar._ I’m reminded of [a bit](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu7aj1SCE8k) from\* Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels\* : > [@](#): > > A few nights ago Rory’s Roger iron’s rusted, so he’s gone to the local battle-cruiser to catch the end of his footer. Nobody is watching the custard so he turns the channel over. A fat man’s north opens and he wanders over and turns the Liza over. ‘Now fuck off and watch it somewhere else.’ Rory knows claret is imminent, but he doesn’t want to miss the end of the game; so, calm as a coma, he stands and picks up a fire extinguisher and he walks straight past the jam rolls who are ready for action, then he plonks it outside the entrance. He then orders an Aristotle of the most ping pong tiddly in the nuclear sub and switches back to his footer. ‘That’s fucking it,’ says the guy. ‘That’s fucking what ?’ says Rory. Rory gobs out a mouthful of booze covering fatty; he then flicks a flaming match into his bird’s nest and the man’s lit up like a leaky gas pipe. If you catch all of that on first viewing… yer prob’ly Cockney yerself me China, wot ? 😛 ---
**Author:** ![mascaroni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dc4da7/32.png) [@mascaroni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mascaroni)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cockney-rhyming-slang-rules/675725/52 "2013-12-12T17:05:16Z")
> [@stui\_magpie](#): > > While the derivation of “Pom” may be lost, all Aussies have no doubt what it means now. Soap avoiding, crooked toothed, pasty, flabby, whinging citizen of England. > > Which reminds me, the 3rd test starts Friday and we’re 2 nil up.🙂 > > Looking forward to sitting back in front of the idiot box, putting up the plates and having a few brittainy’s watching the Poms get FUBAR’d:D A demonstration of why convicts shouldn’t be allowed access to the internet… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Flywheel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Flywheel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flywheel)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cockney-rhyming-slang-rules/675725/53 "2013-12-12T17:36:05Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > Try translating this: > _As feely homies, we would zhoosh our riahs, powder our eeks, climb into our bona new drag, don our batts and troll off to some bona bijou bar._ Don’ you go rounin’ roun to [re ro](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPY-sCiRCeA)! ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2013, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cockney-rhyming-slang-rules/675725/54 "2013-12-12T17:58:01Z")
I have seen here [http://www.weloveaccents.co.uk/index.php?option=com\_content&view=article&id=217:crs-3&catid=104:cockney-rhyming-slang&Itemid=1010](http://www.weloveaccents.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=217:crs-3&catid=104:cockney-rhyming-slang&Itemid=1010) the proposition that CRS was derived from backslang. Backslang was a more unintelligible form of English with a set of (flexible) rules. Here is a sample: > [@](#): > > Butcher: Good morning madam, what can I get for you today? > Customer: I’ll take a pound of beef steak and make it quick. > Butcher (to his assistant): Go and tuck the dee-lo woc a tib of nettor es-roh. > Butcher (to the customer): I’ve just sent him into the back to get you the best bit. > Butcher’s assistant: The nettor es-roh is on doog even for the dee-lo woc so I’ll get tucking a tib of dee-lo woc. > Butcher: Ee-nif tub I’ll ee-gratch the ee-mass as for the doog tucks. Translation: > [@](#): > > Butcher: Good morning madam, what can I get for you today? > Customer: I’ll take a pound of beef steak and make it quick. > Butcher (to his assistant): Go and cut the old cow a bit of rotten horse. > Butcher (to the customer): I’ve just sent him into the back to get you the best bit. > Butcher’s assistant: The rotten horse is no good even for the old cow so I’ll get cutting a bit of old cow. > Butcher: Fine but I’ll charge the same as for the good cuts. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cockney-rhyming-slang-rules/675725.md?page=2)