The frog and toad – the road. A mid-nineteenth-century phrase reflecting the novelty of seeing amphibious life that most Londoners only ever experienced when travelling away from the city.
Though your true Cockney never feels the need to stray too far beyond the sound of Bow Bells, inevitably there are times when they have to hit the old frog.
* Ball of chalk – walk.
* Bat and wicket – ticket. A rhyme with a cricketing heritage.
* Billy Liar – tyre. References the eponymous (anti-)hero of Keith Waterhouse’s 1959 novel, in which William Fisher tries to imagine himself out of his life as an undertaker’s clerk in Yorkshire but struggles to shackle his lying.
* Camilla Parker Bowles – Rolls-Royce. Honouring the wife of the Prince of Wales and relying on the common abbreviation of the car-maker’s name to ‘Rolls’.
* Cockroach – coach. Evoking images of a decrepit old vehicle on a mystery tour.
* Crowded space – suitcase. A rhyme believed to be derived from the thieves’ habit of lifting suitcases from busy stations.
* Davey Large – barge. After a nineteenth-century docker and a prominent trade unionist.
* Frog in the throat – boat. Going in a frog makes having a ride on the fisherman’s daughter (water) a rather more innocent enterprise than it might at first sound.
* Gay Gordon – traffic warden. Possibly an innocent nod to the traditional ceilidh dance but more likely a non-PC pun suggesting assumptions about the sexuality of these unpopular professionals.
* Grey mare – fare. From the days when one was more likely to get a horse-drawn hansom cab than a bus.
* Halfpenny dip – ship. The rhyme alludes to making your choice in a sweetshop by having a lucky dip in a jar and dates from the nineteenth century, no doubt birthed in the docks where huge vessels were a constant presence.
* Horse and carriage – garage. A quirky rhyme referencing a mode of transport that the garage has played a vital role in supplanting.
* Jam jar – car. This rhyme is now used as the name of a popular website dedicated to the sale of second-hand motor vehicles. Not to be confused with . . .
* . . . Jar of jam – tram.
* Jellied eels – wheels.
* Joe Baxi – taxi. After an American heavyweight boxer briefly famous in post-war Britain for a fight against the then British champion, Bruce Woodcock.
Black Cabs
If you want to hear some genuine London slang, you could do worse than get in the back of a black cab. If you are lucky, you will get to hear some of the city’s most authentic talk.
London’s black cabs are all licensed, following a tradition established in 1662 when the government decided to regulate the business of the horse-drawn ‘hackney carriages’ that were for hire to the public. The last of these came off the capital’s streets in 1947. Today there are some 21,000 automotive black cabs, with every driver required to pass the Knowledge test, an exacting examination of their grasp of the city’s geography. A central London cabbie must know 320 routes (including landmarks and places of interest) within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross.
* Pat and Mike – bike. A Victorian rhyme that conjures up two caricatured Irish navvies.
* Pop goes the weasel – diesel. Recalling the old nursery rhyme. There is a theory that the ‘weasel’ is rhyming slang for ‘coat’ (see here), while ‘pop’ is slang for ‘to pawn’. Such a reading does seem to fit the lyrics: ‘Half a pound of tuppenny rice, / Half a pound of treacle. / That’s the way the money goes, / Pop goes the weasel’ - an exceedingly prescient observation on the price of diesel!
* Pot and pan – van. Also used is Peter Pan, after the 1904 play by J.M. Barrie about the little boy who never grew up.
* Ruin and spoil – oil. Another rhyme that now seems prescient, given our modern understanding of the polluting effects of this fuel.
* Smash and grab – cab. Bringing to mind notions of robbery that anyone who has had to pay a particularly steep fare can empathize with.
* Trouble and fuss – bus. A phrase alluding to the hassle sometimes involved in this mode of transport.
* Westminster Abbey – cabbie. A convenient rhyme based on one of London’s most popular tourist (and thus cabbie) destinations.
SLANG IN ACTION
Bernard liked to go into town but found the ball too long because his plates weren’t what they used to be. On this particular day he went up to the main road as usual and waited half an hour for the bendy trouble, which was late as usual. Bernard had a go at the driver then realized he didn’t have the grey for a bat. So the driver threw him off, telling him ‘On yer pat!’
Translation
Bernard liked to go into town but found the walk too long because his feet weren’t what they used to be. On this particular day he went up to the main road as usual and waited half an hour for the bendy bus, which was late as usual. Bernard had a go at the driver then realized he didn’t have the fare for a ticket. So the driver threw him off, telling him ‘On yer bike!’