Stuff You Should Know - Cockney Rhyming Slang: Beautiful Gibberish

Episode Date: November 7, 2019

What is Cockney Rhyming Slang? It's complicated and its origins are unclear. Learn everything we know about it today.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention Seattle in the greater Pacific Northwest area. If you are in town on January 16th, you are hereby commanded to go to the Moore Theater to see yes stuff you should know. That's right. We are kicking off 2020 with Seattle all new material. We're super excited. You always turn out for us. Tickets go on sale tomorrow for the January 16th show. You can find out ticket info at sysklive.com. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles. If you took

Bryant right there, there's Jerry Rowland right there. So that makes this stuff you should know right here. That's it for me. Can't top that. I was trying to think of a way to say welcome to the podcast in Cockney rhyming slang. Can you make an attempt? My brain is so broken right now. I can't even try. Okay. Good. Good. Well, welcome. It's a good time to record a show. Exactly. You're going to do some cockney in here, right? We want to offend as many Londoners as we can. I don't know. Just channel a little Dick Van Dyke. Oh. You know? Yeah, the American. Doing a bad cockney accent. Well, I did recently rewatch The Limey. Yes, for Casey's benefit. Yeah, the great, great movie from Steven Soderbergh. I've never seen it.

It's awesome. Is it really? Yeah. I mean, I know it's like a classic and everybody loves it, but I mean, it's really that good, huh? Yeah. Because a lot of people liked, I don't know, The Hangover. I like The Hangover. How would you, like The Limey and The Hangover, same level? Yeah, they're the same movie almost. All right. It's weird. Well, then I've seen The Hangover, so I don't need to see The Limey. No, The Limey's great. And Tarant Stamp is awesome, and it uses some cockney rhyming slang in one great scene. My big exposure to cockney rhyming slang is lock stock in Two Smoking Barrels for Snatch, which I think are both directed by Guy Richie, right? Wasn't lock stock like his first attempt in Snatch was the one that like got him

married to Madonna? You a fan of his? Yeah. I mean, as much as I like his movies, I don't like him personally necessarily because he like hunts boar, like a jackass and stuff like that. Yeah. Drunk with his friends in the most like disrespectful way of murdering a pig. I admit his movies. Yeah, I do like his movies. Sounds like he's a creep, too. I'm not going to go on record saying that, but you know. Yeah, those movies are okay. And then I guess, what's his name? Don Cheadle, a little bit in Ocean's Eleven. Sure. He did a little bit of that. Right. And I mean, like, it's code to Americans. It's, oh, there's like a criminal, a British criminal. Right. That's all that means these days.

Yeah, I think so. In movies, it's definitely like all of those are criminal people in the movies. But they're like, you know, kind of slick, cool criminals that like wear leather coats and stuff like that. Not dumb criminals that wear like football jerseys or anything like that. They're like, you know, smooth criminals. That's, I think, what I was looking for. Yeah. But this idea of associating it with cockney is not necessarily associating it with criminals. It's more associated with like lower class, working class, less educated, definitely not the aristocracy over in Britain. Yeah, the upper class, sure. And that by speaking with a cockney accent or more to the point using cockney rhyming slang, you could really differentiate yourself

as a point of pride. Right. Like you were speaking like your group, your in-group, which was at the time cockney. Right. But the big surprise to all this is it's really possible and even probable that it wasn't the cockney that came up with this rhyming slang, that it was somebody else altogether. Maybe. Who knows. Should we say what it is? No. Not for the rest of the podcast. Cockney rhyming slang wasn't even very clearly defined in this piece. Okay. Did you think it was? It's in there. Okay. You got to just kind of separate the wheat from the chaff. So it is a two-word phrase. It is a slang phrase consisting of two words. So far so good. Where the last word of that phrase rhymes with the original word. And it can be, and I think the

best way to do this is just to throw out a few. No, no. Keep describing. Well, the two-word phrase, it can be, it can be a lot of things. It can be a person's name. It can be just something random. It can be a place. It could be a place. It could be a lot of things. It can be anything. Yeah, sure. I guess it can be. But shall we illustrate it through? Well, there's a second part to it too. Okay. The second part, and this is very important, the two-word phrase that you're using to that where the second word rhymes with the word you're actually saying. Yeah, the original word. The original word. Thank you. Usually has nothing to do with it. There's no metaphor. There's no connection. There's no nothing. There's no context to it. It's supposed to just be random,

or in most cases it is just random words. Right. One of which rhymes with the word you're replacing. And to further complicate things. Sure. In a lot of cases, and no one knows why sometimes this happens and sometimes it doesn't. A lot of times that one of the words of the two-word phrase is dropped, and then you're just left with the one word. Which doesn't even rhyme with the original word anymore. Right. That's probably the best description of cockney rhyming slaying anyone's ever given. I think we should illustrate it with a couple of examples. I pulled some from something called the internet. Here's one. The tip and tet. That's how long it took me to come up with that. Tip and tet for internet. But in 10 years it'll just be called the tip. I'm going to

log on to the tip, governor. So let's say your word was, and this was in Oceans 11 specifically, trouble is the word that you're trying to say. Cockney rhyming slaying for trouble is Barney Rubble. Awesome. And so you would say you're making a bit of the Barney Rubble again. Right. When somebody, that was kind of, who was that? Making a bit of Barney Rubble, not the. See, I already did it wrong. No, but I think you did it right. Did that sound like a real person? To an American for sure. Oh, yeah. I'll shout it out later. Oh, man. I finally did a good one. I just don't know who it was. No, but it wasn't a cockney person, is it? Okay. Another example for queen, they would use the term baked bean. Look who's on TV. It's the baked

bean. Right? And that's the queen. I like that one. Or in the case of one that's been dropped, what does Ed use here? Bees and honey? That one is not dropped for money. Okay. But which one was? Apples and pears for stairs. Right. So you would say I'm going to go up the apple and stairs. Apples and pears. Oh, man. Let me retake this, everybody. You would say I'm going to go up the apples and pears to go get my wallet to pay for this pizza or something of that effect. Okay. But then over time, people drop the pears. And so now the word for stairs in cockney rhyming slang is just apples, which if you're just standing there on the outside like a normal American bloke, which by the way means person, you have no idea why this person just called

stairs apples. You got what they were saying because the context is there. You're going up the apples to get your wallet to pay for the pizza. But why would you just say that? Did you hit your head? Is there something wrong with you? What's the problem? Why would you just call that apples? That's why it's so confounding. But the great thing about cockney rhyming slang, and in particular, the great thing about research in cockney rhyming slang is you learn how you get from apples to stairs. And then it makes sense. Sometimes. Yeah, that's true. It's not always. Yeah. Sometimes there's, it's not documented, which Ed points out as one of the problems. Sometimes you can draw the line, the through line, but because it's not documented,

and sometimes these things take years and years to morph into its final version. Right. Unless you're, you know, on the, what would you call streets? On the dole? No, on the streets. Then you wouldn't know. But I don't know what streets is. You can't just make stuff up. Like, there's real words. On the drums and beats. So you're on the drums. Right. But they probably have a word for streets. Like, that's the whole point. You can't just make anything up. But you could if it hasn't been taken yet. Sure. But also, that's the other thing about cockney rhyming slang is it evolves. Right. So old celebrities that no one even knows about anymore fall away to new celebrities whose name also rhyme with, you know, whatever word you're saying. Right. I thought

you meant old celebrities who maybe used to talk this way like Michael Cain. No. He's never said any rhyming slang in his life. Of course. You got to see the movie Alfie. Maybe that's who it was. It might have been Michael Cain. I'll take that. Michael Cain. I think it was as a matter of fact. Yep. Thank you. I'm glad you did it. Noel always says a good joke is to say Michael Cain in the correct accent. Say the words, my cocaine. And it sounds like Michael Cain saying it. And it sounds like the correct accent for Michael Cain. Right. Say it. My cocaine. Well, you just blew that one out of the water. You're going to set me up in the future because now you haven't recorded me saying my cocaine. Well, I've got it two ways now. Man, my cocaine. Here's

the thing. My cocaine? That's my cocaine. That's pretty good. Michael Cain. It is good. You're right, Noel. You just got to say it the right way and not like a robot, Josh. So here's one of the things that's sort of confounding. If you want to look up like a glossary and say, well, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to learn cockney rhyming slang. So for my trip to England, I'm really in with everybody. First of all, bad idea. Second of all, it can be very localized and the accents are all different. Yeah. So even people in London who all use... Well, people in London don't really do, but the people who use cockney rhyming slang in London might not even agree on what word means what. I'm just picturing all the people walking around England

laughing their arses off. I can't wait to get to that one. It's a great one. As we stumble through this. Yeah, Ed had a really good example of why there's no codification of the cockney rhyming slang. He said that when people are creating a language, especially informal ones like slang, they don't write it all down, quote, dear diary, referred to my house as a cat and mouse today because it rhymed. We all had a good laugh. Might try just calling it cat tomorrow and see how it goes. It sounds funny, but that's how it works. Can you imagine stumbling across a diary? And here's the other thing too is there are cases where there is a little bit of a reflection of the original word and the example that it gives here is twist. Yeah. Like to call a woman a twist,

which I don't know if that's derogatory or not, or just some weird slang that no one uses anymore. I don't think so, although I don't know. So these are also the people who use the C word like it's nothing, but can't bring themselves to say fanny. Oh, man, I can't wait to go back there, which we're going to do soonish, right? I'd love to do in 2020. Maybe. Yeah. All right. Right. So twist came from twist and twirl, which meant girl, which is they're talking about like dancing with a girl, twisting and twirling in a nightclub, let's say. Right. So there's some connection in that one. Yeah. So girl ended up becoming twist. So that sort of makes sense. There's another one called on your Todd after a guy named Todd Sloan, and it means on your own.

Right. And the thing is, it's like on your Todd, it makes sense. Sloan rhymes with own. It doesn't have to have any connection, but that one actually does. Yeah. Because Todd Sloan was a famous jockey in the 19th century. Like horse jockey? Yes. Okay. What other kind is there? Disc jockeys. Oh, yeah, sure. So his book, his memoir was called Todd Sloan by himself, which is weird to refer to yourself in third person for your memoir. But there was a line in it that apparently EastEnders in London like really picked up, I was left alone by those I never ceased to grieve for. And so like the idea of being a loner on your own became synonymous with Todd Sloan. His name just happened to rhyme with that. So it's

one of those rare ones where there is a connection to it. And also rare, Chuck, in that this is a 19th century horse jockey and still today on your Todd is recognized as on your own. Whereas a lot of people probably have no idea where he comes from. Exactly. Who he is. And when that happens, that frequently that person gets moved out for potentially another celebrity or another word that's a little more understandable or recognized. Another new jockey to people today, right? Yeah, exactly. Which can you name one? Nope. Nope. All right, maybe we should take a break and we'll talk about some of the other some other examples after this message. Hey, everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering,

could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia, who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at Airbnb.ca slash host. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Okay, we're back. Jerry just opened the loudest sandwich in the history of the world. She's like, hold on a minute. It sounded like it was in a space blanket. It was like Ernest opens a sandwich over here. That was a good one. Not as good as part two. I saw that first one in the theater. Yeah. So here's some other examples that have some of them have sort of stayed over in England and some of them have found their way. Like apparently the term put up your dukes is for cockney rhyming slang. And I didn't write down where dukes came from, but that's where it was originally a cockney rhyming slang term. Yeah, because so you would think it had to do with fists or something. Yeah, dukes for fists. I didn't write that down.

Okay, but so that's another really important point to say about cockney rhyming slang. It's frequently rhyming slang based on slang. So the word it's replacing is the slang word to begin with. So who knows what the dukes actually rhymed with at any point. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. So first of all, I've never heard this, blowing a raspberry. What? Have you heard of that? Yeah. That's tooting out of your... That what I just did is as much blowing a raspberry as actually farting. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. Well, I've heard of giving someone a raspberry like that. Okay. That's the same thing. Yeah. Okay. Well, apparently that's derived from raspberry tart slang for fart. Isn't that amazing? It's

pretty great. Yeah. So that one is one of the rare ones. I love talking about exceptions. Do you know that? Oh, sure. That's one of the rare ones that made its way to America because everyone but you knows what blowing a raspberry is. I guess I'd never heard of the term blowing, but giving someone a raspberry. Same thing. I found two more. One is controversial. It's not set in stone, but it's as good an explanation as any. Get down to brass tacks. I saw that one too. That's a standard for facts. Let's get down to the bare facts. Possibly. That's not done. One that is 100% as far as I can tell is bread. I saw that too. For money. Yeah. In America, bread and honey became just bread. Right. And it caught on here

and caught on again just now. Well, bees and honey though was also for money. Right. Is that just one of the local like depends on where you are things? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But in America, I mean, you know, we use bread. Everybody calls it bread. Yeah. I didn't know that that had come back. Yeah. Somebody wrote in to say it had come back. Let's get this bread. Right. I guess so. That sounds familiar. You need to spend more time on Reddit. Here's another one. Dog and bone stands in for phone. Call me on the dog and bone. Sure. And then Ed says there may be some kind of correlation between one syllable words that lead off that phrase staying in the phrase, but I don't, there are so many exceptions. I don't know if there is a rule.

Exactly. And I think it's really, this is worth saying. We looked all over the place. I know Ed did too for straight up linguistic dissertations and papers on cockney rhyming slang. Right. It's not there. No. It's just treated as fun and hilarious, even though it is its own made up language that's ever evolving, still alive, has been around. We'll talk about the history in a minute for 150 plus years, but apparently no linguist has ever thought enough of it to sit down and write a genuine paper about it. Right. So we couldn't find that, but the one thing that really occurred to me was in looking into it, I don't know if it could ever be explained. I think it's the result of so many individual decisions and then collective agreements to

take up and go along with those decisions. Yeah. And those agreements can be totally undermined by a new individual decision that catches on. Yeah. How could you possibly map and even understand all or explain all of that different stuff? But even though we can't explain it, once you start to learn how it works, it's understandable. So you can't explain, but you can understand it. Yeah. And it's like, I always wonder with any kind of slang or like who makes this stuff up, who sets the rules. It's probably just the kind of thing that just starts on a playground and spreads from there and gets codified unofficially than everyone's using it. Sure. But I wonder if they're, I don't know, you can't trace this stuff, which is sort of

frustrating as researchers. Right. Because I think we like to pinpoint things. Yeah, but I mean, people have tried to trace it and they've come awfully close. Well, we'll get to that in a minute. Okay. I want to go over some more of these. All right. I want to get up on my plates and get out of here. Your plates of meat? Plates of meat, which is feet. Or between podcasts, you probably have to go take a rattle. Yeah. Rattle and hiss. Rattle and hiss like a snake. You got it. And that means pee pee. Right. Exactly. And then I guess we should talk about ours. Yeah, sure. That's the one you were pretty excited about.

Yes. Because it goes even so much farther than ours even. Yeah. It's pretty convoluted. Okay. You want to take it? No, go ahead. Okay. So ours, the very famous name for ass in the UK. Everybody knows that. Sure. It's actually, it comes from Aristotle, which you're like, well, what does that have to do with ass? Well, let me tell you. Aristotle is cockney rhyming slang for bottle. Again, the question is, what does that have to do with ass? Right. Well, originally the cockney rhyming slang word for ass was bottle and glass. Right. It became shortened to bottle. Somebody came along and rhymed Aristotle with it. That got shortened to aris and then to arse.

Crazy. It goes even further than that. Oh yeah. I saw one plaster for arse. Plaster of Paris. Oh, okay. Aris, Aristotle, bottle, bottle and glass, ass. Wow. That's how deep the cockney rhyming slang has covered up the collective ass of the UK. Yeah. And again, it's like, why, you can't, you can't put that in a book and explain it in any kind of way that makes sense. You got to do it on a podcast or a paper. Right. You just have to accept it. It's like, that's how it happened on the street. I think that's a really good way to put it. On the streets of the East Inn, right? Right. On your cocaine. No, not your cocaine.

Yeah. They do have, for all that we're saying about how don't look at glossaries and stuff like that, they do have dictionaries that you can buy if you're a total square. I would guess. It's probably not a cool thing to do. That's like saying, you know, I want to become a rapper. So let me get a rhyming dictionary. Yeah. Although I did have a rhyming dictionary at one point. Well, rhyming, it's not, you know, just limited to cockney. We humans love to rhyme. Yeah. Which is one assertion Ed makes for why it's popular or so long lasting. Well, should we talk about some of the theories on where it originated? Because I looked at a

bunch of places and I don't think, I mean, I think calling it theory is a little, I think they kind of know where it came from. They just don't know exactly why they can pinpoint it to like on this day, on this, in this place. Right. It's not a complete mystery though. No, they've got it basically localized to about a one and a half mile area of London. And basically down to the year, it's just exactly where and exactly who's and exactly why are the real outstanding questions, which is actually a lot of questions. Yeah. One of the, one of the wise was that in this one, I think doesn't have as much credence now, but. No, but it's like the most common one.

Right. Is that you will hear that it was coded language created by criminals to keep the cops confused as to what was going on. Right. Which makes sense in one way because it certainly could cause confusion. But it also, and I think Ed makes a pretty good point that like, were they like, were cops just hanging around overhearing things? Like why did they feel like they needed to create this whole language and cops, if they were street cops would have figured this stuff out as well, you know, because it wouldn't have been that big of a secret. Yeah. There's this guy named Dick Sullivan who wrote an essay on the Victorian web,

which is actually kind of cool. And he said the street cops would have come from the same areas and families and neighborhoods that the criminals would have. So they would have been raised on this rhyming slang anyway. Sure. So it doesn't really hold up to scrutiny when you look at it like that it was a intentionally created coded language meant to confuse the cops. Right. Then that's not to say it nevertheless wasn't associated with some kind of criminal underworld East London types. Yeah. And it almost certainly was taken up by the cockneys, but it wasn't necessarily cockneys or criminals who came up with this rhyming slang to begin with. There's this guy named John Camden

Houghton and he wrote one of the better titled or at least most directly titled books I've ever heard of. And there's no colon. No, there's not. There are a couple commas though. A dictionary of modern slang, Kant and vulgar words used at the present day in the streets of London. And he has a chapter on rhyming slang and he basically says that it was two groups, Shaunters and Paters, basically traveling salesmen who would stand on street corners and hawk their wares and maybe pick your pocket while you were trying to buy something from them and that they came up with cockney rhyming slang. Yeah. And I saw that enough to think that that's probably true. Yeah. The Shaunters in particular spoke in like singing rhyming

language so it would have been a pretty quick evolution. Yeah. I think this one makes a lot of sense. Street criers, I mean England and London especially has a long tradition of street corner barkers and things like this. Right. I remember seeing one myself when I traveled there in the 90s and I was like, they're still doing this stuff. Yeah. It was like a box in the park where you can go stand on it. So box? Maybe. I mean that's where that came from, right? Probably. And just shout your peace. Sure. And then I saw a guy doing it and I thought, what year is this? This is wonderful. Right. It's fantastic. But in particular the Shaunters, they sang and then sold penny ballads, the sheet music of penny ballads, that they would write

real quick after somebody famous died or there was a train wreck or something, they'd write a ballad about it and then be out in the corners selling these things. Wow. But because they were singing in rhymes and sing song, it's a really good bet that these guys were the ones who originated rhyming slang. Yeah. But not necessarily for any kind of intentionally coded language because that same guy, Dick Sullivan says, there's no reason for patarors who sold their, you know, little geegos or trinkets or whatever. I love that word. Or Shaunters who were selling these penny ballads. They worked alone. There was no need for them to come up with a coded language. To communicate with one another? Yeah. In front of a customer who they were ripping off because

they didn't need to communicate with one another in front of customers. Well, I saw that maybe they, you know, could communicate with each other when customers were around or something. I don't know. Right. But the other part of that is that it supposedly flies in the face of how slang develops, that it's unintentional. Right. Like you don't say let's come up with a coded language and here's how it works. Yeah. Even like American teenagers when they have slang that their parents don't understand. Like you remember how that stuff went. It was something you just heard. You never sat around. Sure. I'm hip to that. And said, you know, like, hey, let's use this other word that our parents won't know what it means. Right. We'll call it Pepsi when we're on the phone.

There was also the Victorian back slang, which that was not cockney rhyming slang. That was just pronouncing words backwards. Sort of simple. Like, yab for boy. Yes. But something interesting about that is that it's based on the spelling, not the pronunciation. Right. Which suggests a strong degree of literacy, which you would probably not have found among at least the patters. Right. Probably among the Shaunters because they were writing songs and ballads. Right. So it's possible they came up with that too. But they think maybe it was butchers and butchers assistants who came up with back slang. Oh, really? Yeah. And actually two confused customers are to be able to talk about what price they should charge a customer in front of the

customer. Right. So there is like, you take all these different pieces and you get the current idea and story for cockney rhyming slang. But it's actually a bunch of different stuff. Yeah. That wasn't really all connected until later on. Yeah. What it probably also was not was Irish dock workers. Yeah. There was one theory being bandied about that Irish dock workers would come over and they would speak in this made up rhyming slang. So, you know, they could just talk among their Irish peers and the people of London wouldn't understand them. Not much of this makes any sense at all. No. Because they don't, I think now you see it some in Ireland, but for all those years that it was prevalent in London, it was not in Ireland. Right. Unless they literally just made

it up when they came over from Ireland. Right. Plus, why would they not just speak Irish in front of the English who might not speak it? Yeah. Or what would that be, Gaelic? Sure. I think so. We're getting so much of this wrong. Do you want to take a break and fact check everything and maybe just rewind and start over? Yeah. Let's get our, wait, what was facts? Our brass tacks. That's right. So we got to go get our brass straight. That's right. Hey, everybody. When you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills

and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at Airbnb.ca slash host on the podcast. Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show. Hey, dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey, dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember

getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friends beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey, dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we're back. It's been about 30 minutes since we left you guys. We fact checked everything. And so far so good. Yeah, this is a perfect podcast. So you said at the beginning, you teased

out that it might not even have been Cockney to begin with. Everything I saw kind of placed it in that east, I think they call it cheap side. Really? Area. Wow. Where the Cockneys were, but Cockney was also, I mean, it's also not necessarily specifically one place, right? No, but if you're talking about Cockney people, supposedly the definition of a Cockney person is someone who's born within hearing distance of the bells of St. Mary LeBeau in cheap side, which was in London. What this guy, John Camden Hotten, who was writing in 1860 and placed the origin of rhyming slang 12 to 15 years before. So this guy was like on top of it as it was happening. Yeah. He placed it at a place called Seven Diles,

which is like a big marketplace and I think still is, which is a mile and a half away from cheap side, which at the time was in Westminster at the time of different town. Right. So you had City of London and then Westminster, which is where Seven Diles was. So if you believe Hotten, then it wasn't the Cockney at all who came up with that. It was those Paters and Shantours. That's a different word than I said. No, Shantours. Well, Cockney has, what that is though is just sort of the working class. Right. I think used to be viewed as uneducated and sort of lower class. That may be a bit harsh, but if anything, it was not the upper crust of British society. Right. You know, the pub, the hard drinking

pubgoers. The Rubba Dub Dub Goers. Is that pubs? Yeah, which is another exception because you go from one, one syllable pub to Rubba Dub Dub and it actually has three rhymes in there. Oh, interesting. But that is Cockney rhyming slang for pub. Well, but the Cockneys were also known for a bit more of progressive politics and I think nowadays there can be a bit more of a, of a pride of like a working class pride associated with it. I think there was back then too. Was there? Mm-hmm. But I think that's one reason also why the Cockney accent and Cockney rhyming slang in particular was just treated shabbily and looked down on, you know, by the rest of England. Right. Because it was supposedly, you know, associated with lower classes.

Yeah, it also found its way to Australia. Isn't that right? And then somehow on the West Coast of America where the Australian version came in. Yeah, in the prisons of the West Coast in the US it was called Australian rhyming slang. So I guess some cool guy from Australia showed up and was speaking in gibberish that just made everyone think I want to do this too. Right. It's kind of fun to go on YouTube though and see some of these, you know, because it's such a big thing in England. It's been all over the BBC. I watched one episode of The Two Ronnies where this priest at a sermon in Cockney rhyming slang. It was very funny. And one of those sort of, you know, 80s, I guess it was 80s, early 80s,

BBC comedies are always fun. Right. You know, the production value is not all there. The laugh track is, it had to have been a laugh track. I don't think it was a studio audience. Although it may have been. I don't know. It was hard to tell. That's during the transition. But there were other shows not on your Nelly and the Sweeney and the titles of both of those shows come from actual Cockney rhyming slang as well. Yeah. The Sweeney is particularly dense. It's short for Sweeney Todd, which was rhyming slang for flying squad, which is a particular branch of the Metropolitan police, kind of like major case. So the Sweeney was like the major case division of Metropolitan police. So Nelly comes from the word Nelly Duff, the name Nelly Duff,

which is apparently just a nonsense name. And that rhymes with Puff, which means life. So not on your Nelly means not on your life. Yeah. Clearly. It's so dense. And then of course, things like you mentioned, Guy Ritchie really brought it into the American consciousness in the 90s when he made those two movies. Right. And he brought it into my consciousness. I'll tell you that. Yeah. Sure. So there's a really good question, Chuck, that I think we need to ask. How is it that in 2019, you and I are analyzing a hyper-local slang that came out of the 1840s in some very specific part of London. How is Cockney rhyming slang still around after all this year, all these years, when so much other slang has come and gone over the years that we

have no idea ever even existed? What's the same power of Cockney rhyming slang? Do you expect me to have an answer? Yeah. I don't have one about why it's stuck around other than people, you know, if people don't still use it, then it would have fallen by the wayside. So clearly it's popular. Yeah. Seems to have gotten, and maybe this is just my recognition of it, but seems to have gotten more popular in the last 20 years. What I was reading is that especially in the UK its popularity is based on kitchiness, you know, kind of like hipster irony, like the Cockney rhyming word for wife is trouble and strife. So I imagine that probably doesn't go over very well if you don't call your wife that with a smile like you're joking kind of thing. So I think that's the

current use of it. But I mean, it was used, and it's still in use, and there's still new words like posh and bex is the word for sex. Oh, really? That's pretty new. Apparently Britney Spears can be used for beers. Which is great. And I saw one Nelson Mandela, if you're getting a Stella Artois, is a Nelson Mandela for Stella. So the fact that it's still evolving, still being contributed to, like these existing words are being replaced with new ones. And the fact that it's 150 years old, I mean, there's got to be some thing to it that makes it more, I think it's just so hard to understand until someone explains it to you. I think it's fun. I think it's a few fold. It's fun. It's fun. It's fun. There is a code to it. And part of the fun is

that I think his friends may be trying to make something up and having it catch on. Sure. It's almost like a game, like a word game. Yeah, a bit. Did you just go a bit? And then the unique Britishness of it all has a lot to do with it, I think. Yeah, because even though it got exported to Australia, no one associates it with Australia. Sorry, Australia. But if it really took off in America with hipsters, people in Britain would probably be like, forget it. It's flowing the, well, what is flowing the coupe? What could you say for coupe? It's on the Gwyneth and the Goop. So the Gwyneth, it's flowing the Gwyneth. Okay. That one might catch on. I can do this all day. No. Some of them aren't so good,

but other ones are gems. The why of it all, though, to begin with, I thought was interesting. I asked you why and you said you don't know. No, you said why is it sticking around. I mean, why did it start to begin with? Oh, okay. And I think, you know, Ed makes a pretty good point that their just rhyming period has always been a thing. Right. Even in the States, and he uses examples like sea-later alligator after wild crocodile. Like, I remember saying that when I was a kid. I just said that yesterday. Did you really? Yeah. Sea-later alligator. Yeah. There's just something about it. Maybe it's the childlike nature of it. That's fun. It makes old people feel young again. Yeah. I mean, like it takes something boring and adds a little flair to it,

you know? Or like Yiddish, like Fancy Schmancy. I love that. People say that kind of stuff all the time. I never associated it with Yiddish, but it absolutely is, isn't it? I think so. I mean, not outright Yiddish, but... Yiddish culture? I think so. But yeah, it is strange. It is strange that it started to begin with. And like, I wish there was a definite, like, person zero that we could point to. Yeah. And you know, on the streets of London, and someone thought it was funny, and then they told two friends, and so on, and so on. Yep. But there's not. Richie started it, and Patsy and Ralph Mouth took it from there, and it just kept spreading like wildfire. You got anything else? Yes. I found a 2012 survey

by the Museum of London, and it set off a bunch of articles about how Cockney Rhyman Slang is dying. But if you read the article, it says that 40% of respondents believe it was dying, which means 60% don't believe it's dying. Yeah. So it's good. Yeah. And then they go on to talk about how there's all these, you know, new words that are being replaced and added. So I don't think it's going anywhere. I think its usage has become more ironic and everything, but it's still, like most, most Britons still understand, porky pies means lies. Yeah. Like don't tell me any porkies. Give it to me straight. Well, I think it was good we were able to sit here and have a good rabbit and pork. Sure. Or torque. Apparently rabbit and pork is talk. But oh, that was one

other thing. The studying this, there's reasons people study this. It gives you a window into the past. For example, by pronunciations. Yes. So farthing used to be a Camden. Well, farthing's like a quarter penny that they don't use anymore. But it used to be called a Camden after Camden Gardens, which tells linguists, if they would get off their dust and study this thing, that they used to pronounce farthings as fardens. Oh, interesting. Or at least it's something that rhymes closely to gardens. But that's why people study this, allegedly. Amazing. Well, if you want to know more about Cockney rhyming slang, get yourself a great Cockney rhyming dictionary and go to England and just start talking up a storm. They love that stuff. They love it. They can't

get enough. They'll treat you like one of their own. That's right. And since we said that, it's time for Listener May. Satanic Panic. We just re-released that as a Saturday select. I think that was, was that one of your picks or one of mine? I don't know. I'm not sure, but it was a good pick for October, one of our favorite episodes. Yeah, it was great. I think of all time. And we got a lot of people emailing again about it after listening to it for the first time. Hey guys, listen to Satanic Panic and realize I had a story about that. I grew up in a suburb of California. By the teenage years, I'd become what you might call Goth. War Black, Spike Jewelry, Dark Makeup and all that stuff. My town had a 10 p.m. curfew and one night when I was 14, my

friends and I were walking home after curfew, got pulled over by the cops. They questioned and searched us, then called the parents, except for mine. I'm not sure why, but the officer insisted on driving me home. Once there, he also demanded to come inside my home. I was too scared to argue, so I let him in. He went to my bedroom. This is getting creepy. Yeah. I was really worried about where this was headed. He went to my bedroom, which is full of posters of Marilyn Manson and The Crow and stuff like that. And he started going through my things. What? He told me he was concerned because Satanists are out there and that if I wasn't careful, I'd find myself sacrificed. He told me there were rituals and barns that require virgins and that I should rethink my

lifestyle before I got raped or hurt. I thanked him for his concern and I quietly said everything nice that I could to get him out of my house before he woke up my father. The situation, this happened in 2000. After hearing your episode today, it's hard to believe that the residue, the satanic panic, would still be around then, especially in the police force. Just to be clear, the suburb I lived in had very little crime, so the officer was very surprising indeed. My boys and I loved your show. I recommend it to everyone. Nice. That is from Lisa G. That is really something, Lisa. I know. Kind of disturbing. I don't know if that cop was a good guy. It started to go down a pretty creepy road there. It really did. Maybe he was just looking

for some pot or something. He was just coming up with a cover story. I got to get in your room and go through your stuff. Exactly. You got any weed? Yeah, really. I was relieved to know that it just ended in the cop leaving, but he went above and beyond and not in a good way. Right. Well, thanks a lot, Lisa. I'm glad that you made it through that and that you and your boys are listening to stuff you should know. Could you get any cooler? I don't think so. Well, if you want to be cool like Lisa and her boys, you can get in touch with us by going on to Stuff You Should Know. Checking out our social links there. And as always, send us an email to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff

Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my

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