ROAST PORK THE BILL LANG: Rhyming Slang in Australian Folk Speech
Graham Seal
Australian-English is rich in folk speech and Australians have long been noted wielders of colourful and sometimes abrasive colloquialisms. One significant element of the folk speech repertoire is the form known as ‘rhyming slang’. This colourful style of wordplay originated in Britain but, from around the late nineteenth century, became a feature of streetspeak. This article surveys the few past investigations of rhyming slang and combines these with recent research to develop an outline history of this significant but neglected form of Australian folk speech. Utilising a large collection of rhyming slang assembled by the author from fieldwork and published sources, a number of observations about the role and functions of rhyming slang in Australian culture are advanced, as well as the debunking of some persistent foundational myths about the origins and provenance of the form.
What is rhyming slang?
Rhyming slang is a sometimes-complex form of language play that rhymes the names of everyday objects, places and experiences with (usually) two words to form a brief, sometimes odd or colourful couplet. Some common examples are frog and toad for road, dog’s eye for pie and dead horse for sauce.
Once a particular rhyming slang has been established among its speakers, it may often be shortened, or ‘clipped’. So trouble and strife becomes simply the trouble, old china plate becomes just china and thief and robber simply thief. Even in the 1850s rhyming slang had been in existence among Cockneys long enough for this part of the game to be played. One of the first word collectors to notice rhyming slang, gives the example of nosey-me-knacker, meaning tobacco, which was already shortened to nose-my. Tit for tat was a hat, usually rendered in the shortened form as titfer This shortening is the preferred mode of discourse between competent rhyming slangsters.
A further elaboration is to use the shortened form to refer to something quite different. An Aristotle, for example, is a bottle, usually shortened to just Aris. This is close enough to ‘arse’ for Aris to be used as a playful term for that part of the body. It is also possible for an accomplished user to rhyme on the abbreviated form of the original, as in the World War 2 example of ocean liner for mate, a rhyme on china, the short form of china plate.
The Origins of Rhyming Slang
One of the mysteries surrounding rhyming slang is exactly when it originated. Rhyming slang was first recorded as common parlance among Londoners –probably not only Cockneys - in the late 1850s, though is thought to have been spoken in the 1840s, or perhaps a little earlier. Certainly there is only passing mention of it by observers of everyday life and language such as Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew in the first half of the nineteenth century. The apparently sudden appearance of this poetic playspeech in the mouths of Cockneys and costermongers inspired various theories about its origins. Some thought that it was the clandestine language of street ballad-sellers, or paper-fakers. Others suggested it was a secret criminal code, or was perhaps adapted from the street speech of beggars.
Whatever its exact origins - and none of these suggestions need be mutually exclusive - rhyming slang has ever since been a vital part of London’s linguistic life. It was certainly popular and widely known by the 1890s, when the writer ‘Doss Chidderdoss’ (A R Marshall) wrote entire poems in rhyming slang for sporting periodicals. Rhyming slang was also used in the now mostly obsolete British racecourse sign language of tic tac, and it appears in slightly adapted form in the venerable gambling game now often known as ‘Bingo’, or in its earlier form of ‘housey-housey’ or just ‘housey’, as it is often known in Australia. In Bingo, the number ‘sixty-six’ is usually rhymed – almost - on clicketty-click, two may be called as me and you, man alive or Jack’s alive may be called for five and dirty Gertie is often thirty, among many other variations.
The criminal connections of a few rhyming slang terms have led some to conclude that the Australian version originated in the ‘flash or ‘kiddy’ language of the transportation era. This is not so. Rhyming slang was, and is, used in specialised forms by criminals and those with ambivalent relationships to the law, such as patterers and other vagabonding entrepreneurs. However, it did not originate as a secret criminal language but more likely as a playful form of linguistic sparring within London’s Cockney and itinerant communities, quite possibly with some stimulation from the many Irish navvies who lived and worked in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Rhyming slang appears to be originally an English rather than a British phenomenon, apparently not existing previously in Scots or Welsh varieties of English, though having been exported, it is thought, to Irish-English and possibly to Irish Gaelic and some dialect forms of speech. It is also spoken in Scotland and Northern Ireland and in South Africa. While these parts of the world have greater or lesser repertoires of rhyming slang, it is probably true to say that Australia has been the place outside England where rhyming slang is most broadly spoken. As well as borrowing and adapting many British rhymes, Australians have developed a large stock of local rhyming slang that forms a distinctive element of folk speech, past and present.
Rhyming Slang in Australia
Australian rhyming slang was first noticed in the speech of Sydney and Melbourne larrikins in the late nineteenth century, though was probably on at least some lips during the 1880s, perhaps much earlier. Larrikins were flashily-dressed, pipe-smoking and often anti-social youths, more or less, who operated in all-male gangs known as ‘pushes’. They were working class, violent, masculinist, often criminal and bore little resemblance to their romantic and sanitised popularisations in the language of C J Dennis’s ‘Sentimental Bloke’ (1914) and ‘Ginger Mick’ (1915) . They were noted users of slang, for which they had quick ears and ready tongues.
The earliest known example of Australian rhyming slang is the term Jimmy Grant for immigrant’. It was noted in Australia in 1859, and more than a decade earlier in New Zealand. . The term does not appear in British rhyming slang. There is then a puzzling thirty-or-so year gap before anyone mentions Australians talking this way. In 1900 a writer for the Sydney Truth observed that ‘Cockney slang is quickly displacing the old push lingo in Sydney’. The examples given in the article were all Cockney rhyming slang:
There is some evidence that rhyming slang was spoken in Australia at least as early as the 1880s . The single Jimmy Grant example from 1859, recorded at the same time as British collectors were first documenting London rhyming slang, does raise the slight possibility that the form existed here from as early as it seems to have appeared in England. But if so, it seems that no-one bothered to make a note of it.
Certainly the inference drawn by Sidney Baker from the absence of Australian rhyming slang in the ‘The Detective’s Handbook’ of c.1882 is based on the assumption that rhyming slang was a form of speech restricted to criminals. There is enough evidence around, past and present, to show that this is not – and was not – so, at least in the Australian context. Rhyming slang was spoken much more broadly than in underworld confederacies and so may well not have been considered especially useful for a policemen of the period to comprehend. Hence the anonymous compiler of the lexicon may simply not have thought to include it with the other cryptolectic entries. The fact that some rhyming slang was - and has continued to be - used by criminals does not mean that it is used only by them. This is, perhaps, the foundational error – introduced by the nineteenth century word hunters – that has continued to obscure a clearer view of the longer history of rhyming slang. As this article argues, Australian rhyming slang is associated with a number of identifiable, mainly masculine, occupational folk groups, particularly though not exclusively, the first and second AIF.
A brief history of rhyming slang in Australia provides evidence for this view.
A Brief History of Rhyming Slang
There is some evidence that rhyming slang was in Australian streetspeak at least as early as the 1880s, and perhaps before. The single Jimmy Grant example from 1859, recorded here around the same time as British collectors were first documenting London rhyming slang, does raise the slight possibility that the form existed in Australia from as early as it seems to have appeared in England. But if so, it seems that no one bothered to make a note of it.
It has been suggested that Cockney rhyming slang became popular in Australia through the influence of touring British theatrical entertainments, some of which featured this then-fashionable form of street speech, which also became popular in British music hall songs. The larrikin ear for linguistic novelty, colour and vulgarity would certainly have been attuned to its cheeky rhymes, rhythms and occasional alliterations. There is probably some truth in this view. But the continual arrival of British migrants in Australia throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth is the most likely explanation for the presence of rhyming slang in Australian speech. The street life of Sydney was still noticeably Cockney in the 1820s and probably for some time after. The author of A Walk Through Sydney published in 1829 noted of the street sellers calling their wares that ‘The cries of Sydney are all genuine Cockney’. Australia, despite its growing sense of national identity, was still a strongly British – predominantly English - culture in which imported speech forms were widely spoken. Much late nineteenth century Australian rhyming slang drew heavily on that spoken in England. Pen and ink for stink; trouble and strife for wife; cheese and kisses for missus, are just a few examples of rhyming slang terms common to Britain and Australia.
But as well as these borrowed items, Australians fairly quickly developed a range of terms with a salty local flavour, increasingly spicing the vernacular of the period with home-grown flights of miniature rhyming fantasy. A relatively early piece of evidence for the general provenance of rhyming slang is a novelty letter written by the traditional singer, yarnspinner and autobiographer H. G. ‘Duke’ Tritton, allegedly in 1905, though probably composed about a decade later. The letter includes the Cockneyisms china plate for mate and frog and toad for road, among others. But it also uses some distinctively Australian specimens, such as steak and kidney for the city of Sydney, Joe Blakes for snakes and thief and robber for cobber.
Although there are doubts about the early date of Tritton’s letter, it seems reasonable to assume that British and Australian rhyming slang developed along their separate ways from around this time. Certainly the form was well established among Australian troops by World War 1, when such terms as pork and cheese for Portuguese and disaster for piastre, mad mick (a pick), plink plonk (vin blanc) and Henry Tate (an R E 8, a two-seater machine used by the Australian Flying Corps) were recorded among Australian troops.
By way of comparison, another rhyming slang letter, written this time by a British soldier in 1917, included none of the Australian terms that by then were being bandied about by diggers. But it did contain a number of the Cockney items that have also been heard in Australian rhyming slang, including: old pot-and-pan for old man (father), pig’s ear for beer, nanny-goats for throats and you-and-me for tea. While it is unlikely that this letter was ever posted, its appearance in a trench journal or soldier newspaper provides a rare earful of rhyming slang in the British trenches of the Great War. According to the editorial comment, rhyming slang was an often-heard feature of trench talk. From this evidence it is reasonable to suggest that the British and Australian (and New Zealand) forms of rhyming slang came into linguistic proximity through the close military contacts, as well as during the leave periods of Australian troops in ‘Blighty’.
Little definite is known of rhyming slang during the interwar years, 1919-1939. But the names of personalities from the early cinema and of sporting celebrities used for rhymes, as well as the rhymes on other Australian vernacular terms, suggest that the form was alive and well. Rhymes on then-common slang terms for currency, such as Riverina for ‘deener (one shilling), horse and dray for trey (threepence) and Jill and Jack for a zac (sixpence) were numerous. These words had been around for a long time. ‘Deaner’ had been in use at least as early as 1882, while ‘trey’ and ‘zac’ were recorded in the 1890s. Given the frequent application of rhyming to general slang terms for currency (see thematic section for money terms), it would be unusual for these words not to rapidly attract rhymes. The period between the wars also generated items such as macaroni for baloney (from the Americanism for nonsense or lies), Mary Lou for blue (credit) and Willy Lees for fleas, as well as perpetuating already well-established items from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
World War 2 (1939-1945) produced another burst of rhyming on the tongues of Australian soldiers. War correspondent Gavin Long heard it frequently and wrote down many examples. So common was rhyming slang at this time that it featured in the Bluey and Curley comic strip carried by the Sydney Mirror in 1942.
The compilers of the Instructions for American Servicemen in Australia 1942, thought it important to provide some examples of rhyming slang to unsuspecting American service personnel. These were trouble and strife, rubbadedub, Joe Blakes (shakes), Oscar Asche (cash), plates of meat and John (for a cop, from the rhyming slang Johnhop). They could have added fiddly-did for quid (or pound sterling), ginger beer (a term later used for a queer, or homosexual) for an engineer, Dorothy Gish for a dish of food, Betty Grable for a table, and Gregory Peck for neck, to mention but a few in circulation at this time.
The World War 2 period also saw an attempt to clear up a perplexing rhyming slang mystery. In 1944 the American lexicographer David Maurer set out to discover why some criminals in his country, especially in gaols, used rhyming slang and held a strong belief that this lingo had been brought to America by wayfaring Australian criminals. Sometimes the Americans even called it ‘Australian slang’. Certainly an unusually large number of Australians have been notorious in the international underworld during the twentieth century and since. A detective giving evidence at London’s Tower Police Court in 1938 claimed that ‘95 per cent of the confidence tricksters in this country either come from or have lived a long time in Australia’. The lexicographer Eric Partridge thought that Australian rhyming slang infiltrated the American underworld by way of Australian con artists targeting the west coast as a source of rich pickings. As with some other statements made by Partridge, this assertion does not appear to be based on any documented evidence.
But while there may well have been more than a few Australian con men, thieves and forgers disgracing American shores from relatively early in the nineteenth century (the California gold rushes of the 1840s have been implicated in this migration), there was a statistical anomaly. Of more than 340 rhyming slang terms collected from American crooks only three percent could be traced to Australia and almost half of the rest came from Britain while the remainder were solidly American. Even though the US criminals thought of rhyming slang as Australian, it did not seem to be an accurate depiction. Using the pan-American network of criminal informants he had developed over many years, together with the assistance of the Australian lexicographer Sidney Baker, Maurer was able to partially answer his own questions.
Maurer and Baker compared their respective collections, did some calculations and arrived at some reasonable conclusions. It seemed clear that the clandestine travel routes of the internationally mobile criminal connected Britain, Australia and America into a powerful linguistic communication channel. Maurer had found that the majority of rhyming slang was concentrated on the West coast, the most convenient point of entry and departure for Australians. Although weaker in the east, rhyming slang was still spoken there and Maurer found that its internal migration followed the usual criminal tracks across the country. As in Australia, a lot of rhyming slang was spoken among prison inmates and it was a general criminal form of expression rather than one associated with particular specialisations, such as safe crackers or pick pockets and so on.
In terms of how much American criminal rhyming slang was Australian and how much British and American, Maurer and Baker concluded that of the 352 terms that were used for the exercise, 340 (97%) were either British or American in origin. Only 12 terms (3%+) were of definite or likely Australian origin. Maurer wrote that American criminal rhyming slang ‘appears to be Australian only in a trivial degree; it is infinitely more English (or Cockney) and still more is it indigenously American’.
The Australian-only terms used in America included Captain Cook for look, Hawkesbury Rivers for the shivers and Mad Mick for a pick (axe). Another Irish-Australian influenced usage was Pat Malone for being alone. Of the almost 50% indigenous Americanisms in this well-travelled tongue, Maurer listed such items as you know for snow (cocaine), see the shine for dime, pitch the plod for plough the sod, hat and cap, the clap (gonorrhoea) and Mary and Johnny for marijuana. Most of the American terms could only be said to be of probable US origin and there was a good deal of borrowing of Americanisms in Australia, as well as some in Britain.
Neat and tidy though this all appears, there are still some mysteries. One American rhyming slang term sounds as though it is of unmistakeably Australian origin. Cockies clip for a dip (a pickpocket) in American rhyming slang. A cocky is an Australian term for a small farmer, and not known in America. Clip refers to the wool harvest, also an Australianism. However, cockies clip, while not unknown was, and is, rare in Australian colloquial speech, criminal or otherwise (it is used for a ‘dip’, as in a swim). Another perplexing example is Cobar shower. Cobar is a small town in outback New South Wales and the term is used in Australian vernacular to denote a dust storm. However, the term is known as Australian rhyming slang for a flower, which is also its American criminal usage.
After the war it seems that rhyming slang continued to be spoken by many Australians, if not perhaps as widely as during the war years themselves. Rhyming slang may have retreated to its lodging in certain forms of occupational speech. Judging by the number of rhyming slang terms with sporting connotations, (a persistent connection from the earliest years of rhyming slang’s popularity), the form almost certainly continued to be used by followers of, and commentators on, certain popular sports. These were cricket, Rugby League, Australian Rules football and horse racing, in which fields rhyming slang is still heard today. Some items of rhyming slang are also in use among priosn populations during the first decade of the present century, at least in New South Wales.
The many rhyming slang terms based on the names of film stars and sporting personalities of the 40s and 50s strongly suggests that the form continued to be a firm element of colloquial speech throughout the later 1940s and 1950s. The male generation that came to maturity in that period and who served in the armed forces where rhyming slang had been pervasive, ensured its peacetime persistence in Australian colloquial speech.
Rhyming slang seems to have also been a common form of discourse among wharfies or stevedores and to have had some purchase among theatricals, musicians and what is now known as the hospitality industry.
The advent of cheaper airfares from the 1970s allowed a greater number of Australians to travel more frequently than previously. The ‘grand tour’ became a rite of passage for youthful adventurers, the majority of whom spent most, or at least a good part of their trips, in Britain. Here, like their World War 1 forebears they were confronted with a culture toward which they often felt the need to project a distinctive national identity. As did the diggers of Word War 1, they made a fetish of Australian folk speech, creating the image of the beer-sodden and foul-mouthed Aussie.
This remarkable cultural moment was, perhaps unfortunately, captured to some extent in the Australian film genre known as the ‘ocker movies’. In these films, bizarre colonial creations like ‘Bazza’ Mackenzie, played by Barry Crocker (himself the subject of a rhyming slang), wielded uncouth Australianisms, including rhyming slang, against the unsuspecting ‘poms’. Creator of the Bazza character, Barry Humphries, also played to the ocker stereotype in many of his stage creations, such as the especially repellent Sir Les Patterson. In these circumstances, rhyming slang provided the perfect vehicle for testing the always edgy love-hate relationship between Britain and Australia - a linguistic equivalent of the rivalries involved in cricket and rugby football. A good deal of rhyming slang originates in the 1960s and 70s.
Today
From this historical survey, it is possible to argue that rhyming slang is a form of language play that features in the folk speech of intermittent generations. Its first serious Australian appearance is in the late nineteenth century, then around twenty years later in World War 1, again in World War 2 and, if the popularity of the ‘ocker; films and image of the 70s is any guide, once more in that era. We might expect, then, to hear it again from around the beginning of the present century. If the more recent examples found in this book are any guide, the form has certainly not died out and is being renewed with rhymes on contemporary figures such as Stuart Diver (a survivor), Mal Meninga (finger) and David Boon (spoon). While we are not in the midst of a rhyming slang mania, the form is far from obsolete, even if many of its older and more obscure manifestations are rarely heard.
The World Wide Web and email mean that rhyming slang that was once restricted to certain regions or countries may now be rapidly spread and subsequently adopted in different countries. This is evident in the use of terms like Britney Spears for ‘beers’ in Britain as well as in Australia, and quite possibly elsewhere. This trend is likely to continue the traditions of rhyming on the names of celebrities, of which the current era seems heavily supplied. Rhyming slang may well become more frequently created, more quickly diffused but also more rapidly dated as users move on to the next fad, a feature also apparent in relation to other forms of modern slang.
Rhyming Slang in Australian Language Culture
Whatever the future of rhyming slang might be, it has played a significant role in Australian language culture. Particularly signifcant aspects of this include national identity, gender and cultural influences from abroad. Also relavnt are the charactersistics of the Australain variety of rhyming slang and the sources that it has typically drawn on for inspiration.
National Identity
The distinctive and colourful folk speech form of rhyming slang has been prevalent at a number of important moments in our history, particularly up to the time of Federation in 1901 and during both world wars. While rhyming slang is probably no longer as frequently employed as it was during those periods, it is still an important element of the greater Australian lingo. As it often did in the past, rhyming slang continues to have a relationship to popular notions of national identity as expressed and projected through colloquial speech.
This enduring aspect of our folk culture is a characteristically Australian response to the perceived need to articulate nationality, not only within Australia but also beyond, particularly in situations where we are confronted or challenged by the presence of ‘others’ in large numbers, whether at home or abroad. This was especially the case in World War 1 and again, with the addition of a large American presence, in World War 2. A new generation’s travel encounters with ‘others’ since the 1970s also produced a revival of the colourful possibilities of rhyming slang.
Australian speech often forms the basis for distinctively Australian rhymes. Examples include willy wag for a swag; knock me silly for a billy (can); billy lids - kids; cattle dog – catalogue. The rhymes chocolate frogs and hollow logs both refer to the derogatory term ‘wogs’, applied originally to migrants from southern Europe in the post-World War 2 period, though now often used more broadly. Likewise Dapto dog, (usually just a Dapto), a New South Welshism after the famous dog races, the Dapto Dogs. The famous comic strip character, Ginger Meggs, provides an irresistible rhyme for legs and there are many other homegrown varieties in the following pages.
Gender
Rhyming slang is also a significant speech form in relation to gender. Most observers of the form have noted its almost totally masculine appeal and usage. While women may use the occasional term, they rarely converse in extended rhyming slang. While this is true of the form in Britain and America, it is especially so in Australia. Here, our strongly masculine history and persistent culture of mateship have made rhyming slang the preserve of the bag of coke since its beginnings. The terms chosen for rhyming slang purposes are powerfully male in orientation and subject, including a variety of terms for women and their sexual attributes.
The male dominated culture of the urban larrikin seems to have been the incubator for our form of rhyming slang. It received another major boost from 1914 when the largest single assemblage of Australians ever created was the almost totally male grouping of the First AIF. And once again between 1939 and 1945, rhyming slang blossomed within the Australian military forces, mainly it seems, among foot soldiers rather than the navy or the fledgling air force, probably because these were smaller professional bodies with their own traditions of argot and jargon (which include the odd example of rhyming slang). While the number of Australian males involved in fighting the war in Vietnam was relatively small, this era did produce another brief blooming of rhyming slang, with terms like septic tank for ‘yank’ becoming established.
Rhyming slang is also used a great deal by sporting practitioners, their followers and their chroniclers, the sports journalists. Once again, these are mainly sports played by males, though the horse racing industry, these days slightly less gender restricted, also makes extensive use of the form. The sporting connection has been a constant element of Australian rhyming slang, with terms like Adrian Quist (tennis), Edgar Britt (horseracing) among earlier examples and more recent entries such as Frank Hyde (Rugby League) and George Moore (horseracing). Rhymes formed on the names of football celebrities are particularly regional, given the variable popularity of the various codes in different states. Interestingly, there seem to be few rhymes formed on the names of noted players of other sports, apart from tennis. These sports all have, or had, close connections with popular conceptions of national identity.
A specialised form of rhyming slang retains a firm hold within prisons. A few valuable collections of prison slang have been made by amateur convict lexicographers and these, together with the informants of other researchers, confirm the broad use of rhyming slang among male criminals, past and present. Other largely male collectivities in which rhyming slang has been noted include wharf labourers, folk and jazz musicians and a sprinkling in the speech of sailors
A further reflection of this masculinism is revealed in the thematic grouping of rhyming slang terms. There are no female terms for males, while there are a considerable number of mostly vulgar male terms for women. Some recorded examples of rhyming slang highlight the connection between the form and male sexual interests, with its use in phrases such as ‘Look at the Vatican cities on that three wheeler’. Similarly with another major category of rhyming slang, the naming of clothes, where most of the items refer to male rather than female apparel.
Cultural Influences
Australian rhyming slang accurately reflects the main cultural, political and economic realities of our past and present. A significant proportion of the repertoire is borrowed or derived from English usage, probably of London, including Bristol/Manchester Cities, trouble and strife, pen and ink, etc. Another significant sector shows the influence of America, especially American popular culture, with many of the proper names used as rhymes being those of Hollywood stars or other celebrities such as Clarke Gable (table), Bob Hope (soap) and Betty Grable (table), and even going back as far as Lillian Gish and Mae West, both personalities from the very early days of cinema. As our history and culture have, to date, been strongly influenced by these countries it is not surprising to find that we have based some of our distinctive rhyming slang on prominent names from elsewhere, as we have with other forms of folk speech.
Irish influence in Australian rhyming slang can be clearly seen in items such as Rory O’Moore, Brian O’Lynn, Dublin Fair and rhymes on Irish names like Maguire and Malone. Even eponymous heroines of sentimental songs, such as Kathleen Mavourneen for ‘morning’ appear – though this seems to be an Australian original. Solid though these contributions are, given the preponderance of Irish in the Australian nineteenth century population and since, these items seem to be relatively few in number.
Despite these multicultural influences, Australian rhyming slang contains numerous derogatory terms for those who originated many of its forms. ‘Pom’ and ‘Yank’ are terms used as mild banter by most Australians, though they can be offensive to those against whom they are directed - who do not necessarily share the angular sense of humour practiced by many Australians. Try explaining to American visitors why they need not be offended at being cheerily referred to as septic tanks and seppo’s.
Characteristics
Most rhyming slang takes the form of a couplet on a single term. There are very few rhyming slang terms that are longer than two words and few shorter. It is arguable that words rhymed on one monosyllabic word - such as sprouse for grouse - are not true rhyming slang anyway. They certainly lack the rhythmic impact of the ‘X/+X’ formula which, when properly used, invokes not only the rhyme but broader, sometimes whimsical, sometimes ironic, connotations, as in Harold Holt, to bolt, the red hots for the trots’ (diarrhoea), trick cyclists for psychiatrists and mystery bags for snags, or sausages.
Another rhyming slang characteristic is its convenient capacity for euphemism. Rhymes like brown bread, garden shed and kangaroo Ted humorously avoid the reality of death. The threat of cancer is euphemised in a great many terms, including Johnny dancer, candy dancer and Mario Lanza. The numerous rhymes for a variety of vulgarisms, including swear words, body parts and functions, as well as sexual acts, perform a similar
role.
Rhyming slang is also useful as double entendre insofar as the often-vulgar reference of the full term can be disguised by using only (usually) the first part of the rhyme, as in sheep (shanker), for wanker and Wellington (boot) or just Wello for root, where the meaning is sexual intercourse.
An obvious and appealing characteristic of rhyming slang is its colourful and generally visual nature. Terms like dog’s eye, Noah’s Ark, kid blister and so on, involve metaphorical juggling that conjures up humorous images. This feature is amplified when a number of rhyming slang terms are run together in combinations such as ‘Give me a dog’s eye and dead horse’ or ‘take a butcher’s hook at the Ballarat on that artichoke’. Even the more banal forms can be made to sparkle when used in a sustained sequence of speech.
While many rhyming slangs are fairly pedestrian and predictable, the repertoire contains some startlingly colourful, whimsical and apt items. Some examples include dodge and shirk for work, sudden death for bad breath, Mallee root for a prostitute, heavenly plan for man, tiddly wink for a drink, incorporating the folk term for being mildly inebriated, Moreton Bay bugs for drugs and the Freudian strangle and smother for mother.
It is this characteristic of rhyming slang, together with its rhythmic and often-alliterative qualities, that make it appealing to children. As June Factor demonstrates in her dictionary of Australian children’s folk speech, Kidspeak, terms such as horse and cart, pickle and pork, Germaine Greer, frog and toad or hollow log (‘dog’, as in one who breaks the rules of a game), are part of children’s language play. Children have a strong tendency to adapt adult lore to their own needs. The rhyming slang Jimmy Britt for ‘shit’ has come, through the linguistic trick of reversal, to mean something deemed particularly good in children’s folk speech, much as ‘wicked’ and ‘sick’ came to mean ‘good’ in adolescent folk speech from the late twentieth century.
Sources and Subjects
Names of prominent and even not-so-prominent people have always proved fertile sources of Australian rhyming slang, such as Bass and Flinders - winders (windows); Captain Cook - look, as in Take a Captain Cook at that, also used in Cockney rhyming slang. The use of the names of well-known identities is even more apparent than it was in the past. Relatively recent examples includes Germaine Greer for a beer, or ear, Kerry Packered for knackered and Reg Grundies (usually just Reginalds) for male underpants. Rhyming slang in use among a group of thirty-something’s in Melbourne in 2006 included plays on a number of figures currently or relatively recently prominent in the media, including David Gower for a shower; Billy Guyatt for diet, Mark Boucher for a voucher and Stuart Diver for a survivor.
This last term nicely demonstrates the ability of rhyming slang to capitalise on a topic of the day, in this case the near-miraculous survival of a man buried under snow for sixty-five hours in 1997, as well as its ability to encapsulate the essence of its meaning in the rhyme term. In 2007, the visit of the Dalai Lama to Australia in controversial circumstances produced the new rhyming slang Dalai Lama/s for drama/s, as in the idiom, ‘no drama/s’, meaning everything is all right, rendered as ‘no Dalai Lamas’. Whether this opportunistic coinage will persist much beyond its beginnings is unknown, but even if it does not it provides a useful example of the process by which new rhyming slang can arise.
Fictional or mythic characters from many sources have also provided an important basis for Australian rhyming slang. Steele Rudd’s famous characters, Dad and Dave are used for a shave. Although most are not aware of it, Chunderloo for spew, derives from a Norman Lindsay cartoon character, now immortalised in abbreviated form as chunder. Those we have imported from elsewhere are, like most Australian slang, happily incorporated into the local lingo. From America, Mickey Mouse is grouse (good), after the evergreen Disney character, though the term ‘Mickey Mouse’ is also used in non-rhyming slang form as a description of someone or something considered unreliable or faulty. Another American cartoon inspired rhyme is Bugs Bunny for money. From Britain we get Andy Capp for crap and Wallace and Gromit for vomit, among others. Overall, names of individuals, real or not, are the largest single source of Australian rhyming slangs.
Similarly, the names of places have contributed their share to the formation of our rhyming slang, often adding a local touch. A Barossa Pearl is a girl. Some further examples include Bulli Pass (sometimes simply Bulli or Pass) - arse (compare with the English Khyber Pass, or Khyber, which have also been heard in Australia); Coffs Harbour - barber; Hawkesbury Rivers - shivers, (usually Hawkesburies); Tennant Creek and Werris Creek for a ‘Greek’ and Williamstown Piers for ears.
Examples of restricted or special usage can be found in cities and states, with regionalism being a definite and mostly overlooked feature of the form. Lewis and Whitties is a Melbournism for titties, Onkaparingas are fingers, after the South Australian town of that name, while an arm is a Warwick Farm in New South Wales. A Dr Bevan is - or was, as it is now probably obsolete - a seven only in Melbourne. Other rhymes on well-known places, though, are heard around the country, including Sydney Harbour for a barber, Kembla Grange for small change and Melbourne Piers for ears. Kirk’s Bazaar for a car is a Melbournism after a well known annual event in that city, while the penis, or ‘cock’, may be a Victoria Dock in Melbourne but a Mort’s Dock in Sydney. A distinctively Western Australian example is jarrah blocks for socks.
Does this mean that banana-benders, Territorians, Croweaters and Taswegians do not rhyme their slang? No. The mainstream forms of rhyming slang are spoken in all these places and further research will no doubt eventually turn up regional and local variations. These will probably be based on the names of local places or even individuals, as in the case of a New England town where a prominent local’s surname rhymed with schooner, the largest NSW measure of beer. For some years since the early 2000s locals have been ordering their schooner’s at local pubs simply by asking for ‘an Eris’, the now immortalised identity’s first name, a classic rhyming slang routine.
The major focus of rhyming slang involves playfully naming/re-naming aspects of everyday life. The largest single category refers to the human body, its parts and functions, from the lump of lead to the buttons and bows. This is closely followed by sex, clothes and various forms of drug taking, notably of the alcoholic variety.
Conclusion
It seems that rhyming slang is not a criminal cryptolect. While used by criminals in Britain, parts of the USA and Australia, is not of underworld origin. Instead, it probably developed as an extended form of verbal play among London costermongers and street sellers as early as the 1830s, perhaps as an audible novelty to attract custom. It passed from there into broader circulation at various times in Australia, Britain and elsewhere, including the late nineteenth century, World War 1, World War 2 and, to some extent, during the Vietnam War era. It has also been – and sometimes still is - practised in a number of well defined folk groups, including larrikins, soldiers, entertainers , waterside workers and followers of some popular sports, especially horse-racing and football. Some items of rhyming slang still have considerable purchase in contemporary Australian colloquial speech and there is intermittent interest in the form among youthful speakers, spurred increasingly, it could be speculated, by the discursive dimensions of the World Wide Web.
This brief study of a minor and so often- neglected form of Australian folk speech reveals its role in a number of important cultural areas, including nation, gender, regional identity, and occupations and pastimes. It also suggests that while the form may be considered largely passé, it still has currency, even among the young. Like much folklore it lies dormant, only to be reawakened when invoked by the cultural circumstances in which it has previously thrived.
REFERENCES
All the examples referred to in this chapter, together with the full texts of the rhyming slang letters mentioned and a thematic arrangement of Australian rhyming slang can be found in Graham Seal, Dog’s Eye and Dead Horse: The Complete Guide to Australian Rhyming Slang (Sydney: ABC Books, 2009).
See Graham Seal The Lingo: Listening to Australian English (Sydney: University of NSW Press, 1999 for a cultural survey.
John Camden Hotten, A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words, (London: 1859).
Partridge gives some not very convincing examples from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Eric Partridge, Slang Yesterday and Today, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1933) 274, while noting that the first solid documentation of the form was by the pseudonymous ‘Ducange Anglicus’, The Vulgar Tongue London: 1857) and in expanded form by the same author (thought to be the book’s publisher, Bernard Quaritch) in 1859, and by Hotten, A dictionary of modern slang.
Antonio Lillo, ‘A Wee Keek at Scottish Rhyming Slang’, Scottish Language, 23 (2004): 93-115; Antonio Lillo ‘Exploring Rhyming Slang in Ireland’ English World-Wide 25, 2 (2004): 273-285; Diaz, I & Lillo, A., ‘Betty Boop’s Ready! Some Aspects of South African Rhyming Slang’, English Today 70, 18:2 (April 2002): 21-27.
James Murray, Larrikins: Nineteenth Century Outrage (Melbourne: Landsdowne Press, 1973).
The extensive lexicon of larrikin speech in C J Dennis The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1915) includes very few items of rhyming slang.
Joan Hughes, Australian Words and Their Origins (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989)
Baker, The Australian Language, 358 quoting a writer in the Bulletin, January 18, 1902.
Baker, The Australian Language, 358, and implicity accepted by subsequent researchers, including Gary Simes, A Dictionary of Australian Underworld Slang, (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1993).
An 1898 reference to this being so is given by Baker, The Australian Language, 358.
Quoted in Geoffrey Scott, Sydney’s Highways of History, (Melbourne: Georgian House: 1958) 231-232.
Personal communication Bruce Moore, Australian National Dictionary Centre, ANU, August 2007. My estimation is that Tritton’s letter was written c. 1914-18, possibly later, though containing terms that were in use by World War 1. Some of the terms used are not likely to have been in use in 1905. The term ‘Oscar Asche’ for cash seems unlikely to have been formed in Australia before 1909-1911, when the by then renowned actor toured Australia to great acclaim. Likewise, Baden-Powell is unlikely to have been a household name in 1905. Although his Aids to Scouting text had become a bestseller from 1903, he did not found the Scouting movement until 1907.
W H Downing, Digger dialects : a collection of slang phrases used by the Australian soldiers on active service (Sydney, Lothian: 1919); Amanda Laugesen, Diggerspeak: The Language of Australians at War (South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Lce-Corp. A. J. Lilliman, RF, The Direct Hit 1, no. 4, July 1917, 20.
Baker 168-173.
See Peter Stanley ‘The real Bluey and Curley: Australian images and idioms in the island‘ 2004 ajrp.awm.gov.au/ajrp/remember.nsf/pages/NT0000245E accessed March 6 2010. The banality of rhyming slang conversation, when translated, perhaps explains why linguists and lexicographers, including Baker and Partridge have had either ambivalent or even antagonistic attitudes towards this form of folk speech. These attitudes have perhaps explained the paucity of serious interest in Australian rhyming slang.)
Anonymous, Instructions for American Servicemen in Australia 1942, (Washington DC: War and Navy Departments, 1942).
There is also the historical peculiarity of an Australian rhyming slang term appearing in the New York Police Gazette some time around 1850, see Julian Franklyn, A Dictionary of Rhyming Slang, 2nd ed., (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961) 17.
David Maurer, ‘The Australian Element in American Criminal Argots’, American Speech, (October 1944). See also Sir St Vincent Troubridge, ‘Some Notes on Rhyming Argot’, American Speech 21, no. 1 (Feb 1946): 45-47; W Wilde, “Notes on Thief Talk”, The Journal of American Folklore, 13, no. 11, (Oct-Dec 1890): 303-310, reviewing and correcting George Matsell Vocabulum, or the Rogue’s Lexicon, (New York: George W. Matsell & Co, 1859).
See John Meredith Learn to Talk Old Jack Lang (Sydney: Kangaroo Press, 1984) 21.
Personal communication from Warren Fahey, 4th National Folklore Conference, NLA, Easter 2008. Fahey was corresponding with a prisoner in Bathurst Jail who reported on the use of rhyming slang in that institution.
Pat Billing interviewed 2007 by Rob Willis National Library of Australia [sound recording] 4273030.
See Simes, A Dictionary.
Meredith Learn to Talk Old Jack Lang.
June Factor Kidspeak: A Dictionary of Australian Children’s Words, Expressions and Games, (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2000).
Mark St Leon, “Australian Circus Language: A report on the nature, origin and circumstances of Aussie argot under the big top,” English Today 10, 1, (1994).
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