When I looked online for some other food examples, I found this citation for raspberry, saying that (from 1890) the shortening of raspberry tart is the rhyming slang for fart. Is that Cockney?
One question from that etymology cite: What is "Old Walloon?"
e shortening of raspberry tart is the rhyming slang for fart. Is that Cockney?
Originally, yes, but it is one of the Cockney Rhyming Slang terms that have made their way into common parlance, with few of their users knowing their (often vulgar) etymology.
Richard English
Posts: 8038 | Location: Partridge Green, West Sussex, UK
That brings up a question that I don't remember being discussed here. When did rhyming slang originate? I doubt there's a definitive answer, but dictionary.com says 1855-60. The OED Online offers this:
quote:
1859 HOTTEN Dict. Slang 134 The cant, which has nothing to do with that spoken by the costermongers, is known in Seven Dials and elsewhere as the *Rhyming Slang, or the substitution of words and sentences which rhyme with other words intended to be kept secret. Ibid. 135, I learn that the rhyming slang was introduced about twelve or fifteen years ago.
That would push it back to about 1845. Both dictionary.com and the OED Online specifically refer to rhyming slang, not Cockney rhyming slang. Is there a difference in this case? Seven Dials (from the quote above), as I understand it, is in West London, and Cockney rhyming slang originated in East London. Am I correct in that?
Which came first, rhyming slang, or Cockney rhyming slang? Did rhyming slang come first and the particular variety used in a part of East London become known as Cockney rhyming slang, or did rhyming slang originate in London as Cockney rhyming slang?
Although Seven Dials is in the West End of London, that is a relative position, and refers to a time when London was smaller. It is more or less in the middle of the modern city. It was certainly close enough for the denizens of its rookeries to be able to hear Bow bells, so under the strict definition they would be cockneys.
I doubt that the cockneys themselves referred to it as "cockney" rhyming slang.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I did an OED search for "rhyming slang", got 160 hits, and checked the cites under the first 20 of them. The oldest I could find were to an 1857 collection of slang terms -- implying that the terms themselves were probably older, but not a lot older.
Might be interesting to see if there's any rhyming slang in Grose's slang dictionary, which as I recall is a few decades older.
