Rhyming Slang

The first two examples come from a Yank so a correction may be in order:

cat and mouse - house
trouble and strife - wife
smooth as silk - milk
seppo - 'septic tank' -> yank
duke (as in "Put up your dukes") - 'Duke of York' from 'fork' from 'fingers' from 'fist'

According to WhyYouSayIt?, a book on the origins of words, the Duke of York's battling prowess became a metaphor that boxers used to describe their fists, thus having nothing to do with rhyming slang. Sort of like saying, "PutUpYourBecks?" to invite someone to pair program. MerriamWebster, however, supports the rhyming version, as do most pages found on a quick google search. The existence of other possibilities is admitted, though.

Cockney is also an evolving language. It moves with the times. As different generations come and go they add their own permutations which are often based on celebrities. As an Australian who spent two years living in London's East End, here are a few of my favourites from the modern era

Posh and Becks - Sex, relating to Victoria (Posh Spice) and David Beckham
Britney Spears - Beers. E.g. Going for a coupla Britneys
Nelson Mandella - Stella ... beer. E.g. Going for a coupla Nelsons
Pete Tong - Wrong ... Radio One DJ. E.g. It's all gone Pete Tong.
Lou Reed - Weed

True rhyming slang always has two connections to the thing the phrase refers to: it rhymes, and it alludes to the thing through meaning in some way. Also, the word that actually rhymes with the original term is often dropped, making it quite difficult for the uninitiated to deduce the meaning.

Actress Jane Leeves (of the American comedy Frasier) recounted her efforts setting up a production company in Hollywood with another British actress. The American sponsors wanted them to give the venture a name that somehow conveyed the idea of two brave women taking on the world. She named the company "Bristol Cities"; apparently, none of the American sponsors figured it out...

So maybe in WWII they should have used cockney instead of Hopi? :-)

Wasn't it Navaho, not Hopi?

There were two units of "code talkers". One attached to the Marines used Navajo (http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq61-2.htm), I forget what the other unit used and who they were attached to.

I read recently that the Canadian Army used Micmac's

Is there any XP-related rhyming slang?

I know some developers that are full of quirks. Do the simplest thing that could possibly work.
spay and neuter computer
kevlar vest unit test

The spay one was made up by me, a Yank, is it any good? I came up with one for "modem" too but I declined to put it up for Puritan reasons.

True rhyming slang always has two connections to the thing the phrase refers to: it rhymes, and it alludes to the thing through meaning in some way. Look at the three examples at the top of the page and you can see how each phrase might be associated with the word it refers to. The same is true for "septic tank" and "yank" ... the link being that Americans were perceived as frequently being full of shit. -- Glenn Vanderburg (a Seppo)

In that case, my "modem" example matches well with spay and neuter. Owning a computer is often considered a drain on one's sex life, while owning a modem often leads to replacing one's missing sex life with visits to the on-line red light district. And now that I've explained it, it's not clever anymore.

The above examples are nouns. There are very few examples which are verbs (or adjectives), but two are "Adam and Eve" ("believe") and "Brahms and Liszt" ("pissed").

A brit I used to work with would always, around lunch time, say "I'm Hank Marvin." Eh? "Hank Marvin = Starvin'!" Oh. Makes perfect sense. But I don't know anything about Mr. Marvin to be able to speak to the second order of meaning. Though I guess we got to two levels when he started just saying "I'm Hank."

This is the same guy who answered "not three bad" to the question "how's it going?" Every. Single. Time.

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