

Sep 3, 2018 This week’s theme

Words coined by rhyming slang



This week’s words

raspberry

titfer

oscar

boracic

scooby



A tiger blowing a raspberry Photo: Michael Wallace Hear a child blow a raspberry Words coined by rhyming slang A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg



What would you say if I told you that dog is another word for a phone, and that apples can mean stairs, and bottle equals class.*



No, I’m not elephants. I don’t even drink.



I didn’t randomly pick and match words -- there’s a certain rhyme and reason to them. Welcome to the world of rhyming slang! Here’s how it works:



Take a word, say, drunk.

Find a phrase that rhymes with it: elephant’s trunk.

Drop the rhyming word: trunk.

Voila, you have your rhyming slang: drunk = elephants.



Perverse, no? And if that’s not devious enough, you can do another iteration and come up with a rhyming slang for the rhyming slang.



This week we’ll see five terms that have their origins in rhyming slang, also known as Cockney rhyming slang, after Cockney, the word for an inhabitant of the East End district of London. The East End was the birthplace of this form of slang.



*dog and bone ⇨ phone

apples and pears ⇨ stairs

bottle and glass ⇨ class raspberry PRONUNCIATION: (RAZ-ber-ee)

MEANING: noun:

1. A sound, similar to breaking wind, made by pushing the tongue between the lips and blowing air through the mouth.

2. A rejection, disapproval, or contempt.

ETYMOLOGY: Rhyming slang, raspberry tart ⇨ fart. Earliest documented use: 1890. A synonym is Bronx cheer

USAGE:

Robin Pagnamenta; Last Call for 13,000 Jobs as BT Downsizes; The Times (London, UK); May 11, 2018.



See more usage examples of “Investors blew a raspberry at the news yesterday, which accompanied a lacklustre batch of fourth-quarter results.”Robin Pagnamenta; Last Call for 13,000 Jobs as BT Downsizes;(London, UK); May 11, 2018.See more usage examples of raspberry in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: A harbor, even if it is a little harbor, is a good thing, since adventurers come into it as well as go out, and the life in it grows strong, because it takes something from the world, and has something to give in return. -Sarah Orne Jewett, poet and novelist (3 Sep 1849-1909)





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