Rhyme and Reason: the Methods and Meanings of Cockney Rhyming Slang, Illustrated with Some Proper Names and Some Improper Phrases

" 'A ftRF A COCK," SAID an English actress once on a film set to director Alfred Hitchcock, "while I lemon me Germans!,,1 This was probably immediately understood by Mr. Hitchcock who, though he has been in Hollywood since Rebecca (1940), was born in England (1899) and may well be able to trade Cockney rhyming slang-for such it was-with the best of them. Rhyming slang has received contributions from the West Coast of America and even the out-back of Australia (which gave us "Wee Georgie Wood"-he was an actor-for "good") but it is essentially a London product, the invention and pride of those born within the sound of Bow Bells.2 From the Cockneys it has spread, in examples such as "elephants" (for "drunk," from "elephant's trunk"), "pimple" (for "scotch," from "pimple and blotch "), and "plates" (from "plates of meat" for "feet") to the trendy West End and entered the lingo of the private (the English of course call them public) schools. Today it is part of the fashionable speech of almost all classes of British society. A small part, but worth notice. "Oh Sairey, Sairey," wrote Dickens, "little do we know what lays afore us!"