Rhyming slang isn't brown bread - and it's all down to Kylie and Miley (2024)

Last week I caught a Vincent thanks to a Miley Cyrus – though to be fair I’d been standing in a George and got myself into a right two-and-eight.

I was already feeling a bit Moby while preparing to get on the Oxo after a business Ronan, but then my friend called on the dog and bone to say that she was too boracic to join me.

My guess was that she’d been Santa’s grotto the night before. Still, I put on my Posh and Becks and sent her some April showers before settling down to a Rosie Lee at the gates of Rome instead.

My hunch is most of you will have automatically decoded a fair bit of the above, but if any of it felt baffling that’s a testament to the enduring power of co*ckney rhyming slang – the coded banter and wordplay that has survived for centuries and was originally intended to be impenetrable to outsiders.

But while there’s a new art installation in East London by Michael Landy designed to introduce the dialect to younger generations, is rhyming slang something from the good ol’ days that’s destined to become a linguistic fossil?

I ought first to decode my opening paragraphs. Many will recognise ‘Moby (Dick)’/sick, ‘dog and bone’/phone and ‘Rosie Lee’/tea, and some will be familiar with ‘boracic’ or ‘brassic’ to mean broke – it is short for boracic lint, a type of medical dressing, and so ‘boracic lint’ is skint.

A ‘George’ (Raft) is a draught, ‘Oxo’ (cube) is the Tube, ‘April showers’ can only be flowers, ‘Santa’s grotto’ means blotto and the ‘gates of Rome’ are home.

Less obviously, ‘two-and-eight’ is slang for being in a state, giving us a nice example of how our rhymes often pack a slice of history. It’s thought this term emerged in the First World War, when two shillings and eight pence was the sum given to soldiers for enlisting.

‘Vincent’ and ‘Miley Cyrus’ are part of ‘popney’, a sub-category of co*ckney from the early Noughties with rhymes based on the names of the famous.

So a ‘Miley Cyrus’ is a virus and a ‘Vincent’ (van Gogh) a cough.

‘Posh and Becks’ are specs, though this famous duo, as Becks and Posh, can double up for food, aka nosh. And we have singer Ronan Keating to thank for a ‘Ronan’ – a meeting. In fact, popney has given a new lease of life to co*ckney rhyming slang.

Some of it will be familiar. We all know things go ‘Pete Tong’ (wrong) and are happy to nip out for a few ‘Britneys’ in our new pair of ‘Kylies’ (Britney Spears/beers and Minogues/brogues).

Those who grew up in the East End might ask to borrow a ‘Pavarotti’ (tenner/tenor) or push their luck with a ‘Commodore’ – one of my all-time favourites: a ‘Lady Godiva’ is a fiver and the Commodores sang ‘Three Times a Lady’ – meaning a Commodore is £15.

All in all, it’s a rich and complicated business. But where did it begin? The first collections involved the vocabulary of criminals in the 16th Century. Its very nature meant that documenting it wasn’t easy: one magistrate, intent on exposing these ‘counterfeit cranks’ who sought to hoodwink or ‘honeyfuggle’ honest citizens, threatened to whip those who came in front of the bench unless they revealed their code.

co*ckney rhyming slang began in a similar fashion early in the 19th Century. The secret language of costermongers – market traders selling, among other things, ‘costards’ or cooking apples – was both joyful banter and a private lingo designed to evade outsiders, whether the police or the occasional customer.

They wanted a language that neither the authorities nor the Billy Bunters (punters) could understand as they bartered in the markets around Whitechapel and Petticoat Lane. Thus classic rhyming slang often references products they sold, such as ‘apples and pears’ (stairs), ‘porky pies’ (lies), ‘loaf’ of bread (head) and ‘blowing a raspberry’ tart (fart).

But this wasn’t just the language of the market. As a bold, irreverent and sometimes complex code, it was ideal for the Victorian underworld.

Rhyming slang lends itself perfectly to the insult, and the word ‘co*ckney’ may even have begun with one. Originally it meant a ‘co*ck’s egg’, a small malformed egg, before being extended to mean a spoilt or cosseted child.

During the 1700s the term was a jibe by rural folk against ‘soft’ city dwellers who knew little of the hard work done in the countryside.

Over time, ‘co*ckney’ became synonymous with working-class Londoners and eventually lost its biting beginnings.

Despite the traditional definition of a co*ckney, restricted to those born within the sound of Bow bells (at St Mary-le-Bow church in Cheapside), to many outsiders, and especially tourists, a co*ckney is seen as anyone from south of Watford Gap.

Fast forward to today, and while the heyday of co*ckney may be over, that doesn’t stop the creation of new examples. English has always lent itself beautifully to wordplay, and rhyming slang is one of its most exuberant displays.

Even if the glory days have passed, rhyming slang is far from brown bread. In fact, thanks to popney it may be about to have a chicken korma (stormer). And on that note, I’m off to the rub-a-dub.