Cockney and rhyming slang: the rhyming argot of London

A Londoner tells you he's going to climb the apples and pears to rest his plates of meat. Translation: he's going up the stairs to rest his feet. You have just met rhyming slang, that coded argot born in the alleys of the East End where, to say one word, you pronounce another that rhymes with it — then often you drop it. It is one of the most baffling and joyful language games in English.

Cockney is at once an accent, a dialect and an identity, that of the working classes of London's East End. Rhyming slang is its most famous and most madcap facet. To understand this speech is to enter a working-class London, mischievous and resilient, which made language a playground and a badge of belonging.

Who is a Cockney? A matter of bells#

The term Cockney traditionally designates the working-class inhabitants of London's East End. The most famous definition is geographic and acoustic: a "true" Cockney is one born within earshot of the Bow Bells, the bells of the church of St Mary-le-Bow, in the Cheapside district. People once even estimated the radius their sound could reach.

Originally, the word had a pejorative shade. In the Middle Ages, cokeney designated a misshapen egg, then a soft city-dweller, ignorant of country matters. Over time it attached itself to Londoners of modest stock, until it became a proud sense of belonging. Cockney is the spirit of the docks, the markets and the pubs of London's East.

To be Cockney is not only to speak a certain way: it is to claim a working-class London, resourceful and proud, recognizable by ear.

The Cockney accent: how it sounds#

The Cockney accent has very marked phonetic traits, which have deeply influenced modern London English. The best known is h-dropping: the h at the start of a word disappears, house becomes 'ouse, have becomes 'ave.

Another signature is the glottal stop: the t in the middle or at the end of a word fades into a little catch of the glottis, butter sounds like "bu'er," water like "wa'er." The th sound tends to become f or v (think → fink, brother → bruvver), and the vowels diphthongize — the famous day heard almost as "die." These traits, once mocked, have spread widely and today feed Estuary English, the accent of Greater London.

Rhyming slang: the mechanics#

Rhyming slang is a procedure of formidable ingenuity. The principle: replace a word with a phrase of two or three words whose last word rhymes with the original. Stairs becomes apples and pears; feet becomes plates of meat; phone becomes dog and bone.

But the system's cruel genius lies in the second step: you often drop the rhyming word, keeping only the beginning, opaque to the uninitiated. Thus stairs → apples and pears → simply "apples." And feet → plates of meat → "plates." To understand, you have to know the whole phrase and know that its rhyme has been cut. The code then becomes almost undecipherable from the outside, which was sometimes precisely the point.

An anthology of expressions#

A few classics convey the flavor of rhyming slang:

• Dog and bone = phone. "Give us a bell on the dog."
• Plates of meat = feet.
• Loaf of bread = head — hence the expression "use your loaf," "use your head."
• Trouble and strife = wife, with a frank marital irony.
• Boat race = face.
• Barnet Fair = hair, reduced to "barnet."
• Porkies (from pork pies) = lies. "Don't tell porkies!"
• Bread and honey = money, often reduced to "bread."

You can see the logic: the image is often comical, with no semantic link to the target word — only the rhyme matters. The pleasure is in the detour, the humor and the complicity.

History and decline#

Rhyming slang flourished from the 19th century to the mid-20th in the markets, docks and pubs of the East End. It was the language of the costermongers (street greengrocers), of the Pearly Kings and Queens, those figures of working-class London covered in mother-of-pearl buttons, and of a whole tight-knit working world.

But the district changed. The bombings of the Blitz during the Second World War, then the dismantling of the docks, the arrival of new populations and urban sprawl dispersed the historic Cockney community. The speech weakened, supplanted among the younger generations by Multicultural London English (MLE), fed by Caribbean, South Asian and African contributions. Many have announced the death of Cockney.

Read alsoWhy Did English Become the World Language?

From Cockney to the thousand accents of the globe, English owes its vitality to its ability to reinvent itself in every street and every community.

Cockney today: nostalgia and pop culture#

Pronounced dying, Cockney nonetheless refuses to vanish entirely. It survives in popular culture: TV soaps like EastEnders, the films of Guy Ritchie where London crooks wield a tasty argot, music, theatre. New rhyming expressions even keep being born, often forged around the names of contemporary celebrities, proof that the mechanism remains alive.

Above all, the accent and certain turns of phrase have spread far beyond the East End, infusing London English as a whole. Rhyming slang has become a playful heritage, taught to tourists, celebrated as an emblem of the London spirit: irreverent, inventive, never fooled.

To discover Cockney is to hear an England other than that of the Queen and the BBC: an England of the streets, where language bends, hides and laughs at itself. To learn English is also to lend an ear to these accents and slangs that make it a language a thousand times richer than the textbooks let on.

FAQ#

What is a Cockney? Traditionally, a working-class inhabitant of London's East End, born "within earshot of the Bow Bells." The term also designates the accent and dialect of that community.

How does rhyming slang work? You replace a word with a phrase whose last word rhymes with it (stairs → apples and pears), then often drop that rhyming word, keeping only the start ("apples"), which makes the code opaque.

Does Cockney still exist? It has declined greatly in the East End, supplanted by Multicultural London English, but survives in popular culture, cinema and television, and has deeply marked the modern London accent.

Some examples of rhyming slang? Dog and bone = phone, plates of meat = feet, loaf of bread = head, trouble and strife = wife, porkies (pork pies) = lies.

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