From pork pies to plates of meat
One of Britain’s best-known accents is cockney, an accent that originated in London. It has been made famous worldwide though films and TV (the movie ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ is a good example). Part of cockney is an unusual slang, called rhyming slang.
The slang is special because it uses a word from a phrase (or name) that rhymes with the intended word. To make things more confusing, sometimes it is not the rhyming part that is used. Here are some famous cockney rhyming slang phrases, that are often now used in other parts of Britain too:
- Take a butcher’s = Take a look (‘butcher’s hook’ rhymes with look)
- Use your loaf = Use your head (‘Loaf of bread’ rhymes with head)
- Adam and Eve = believe
- Tea leaf = thief
- Brass tacks = facts
- Cream crackered = knackered (tired)
- Plates of meat = feet
- Half inch = pinch (steal)
- Pork pies (or ‘porkies’) = lies. Pork pies are a British speciality, shown in the picture.
Cockney is most often associated with the eastern side of London (known as the East End). Although the accent was once spoken by most working-class Londoners, today it is usually only older people. Since the 1980s, young Londoners are more likely to have an MLE (multicultural London English) accent – it is based on cockney, but includes a mix of Jamaican, Indian and African influences. Grime artist Stormzy has an MLE accent, for example.
The original cockney accent and culture lives on in towns around London, a result of people being moved there after their homes were bombed in World War 2. You can therefore hear cockney accents in counties like Essex and Hertfordshire, and even as far out as Thetford in Norfolk. Sometimes this is known as Estuary English, because many of these towns lie along the Thames estuary.
