Why don't septic tanks get rhyming slang?

Snickers Man

Rhyming slang is present in many English speaking countries, to some extent.

Perhaps it's most closely associated with England, and London in particular, where people talk on the dog to their trouble about their bins or arrange to meet their chinas and if some berk gets on their wick then he's likely to get loafed.

In Ireland it's not so prominent but Dubliners do talk about people ending up brown bread after an accident in their jammer so it's not unheard of.

In Australia it's very prominent not least because of the likelihood that you can be attacked by a Noah. But for some reason, it has completely eluded the United States and seppos (another fine example of Australian rhyming slang) are completely bewildered by the whole concept.

Anyone know why that is?


Translations of terms in bold:

dog and bone=phone,
trouble and strife=wife
bin lids= kids
china plates= mates
berkshire hunt= ****
Hampton Wick= prick
Loaf of bread = head
Brown bread = dead
Jam Jar = car
Noah's Ark = Shark

Septic Tank = yank

tac foley

My take on it, talking to a friend of mine in the USA on this very subject a while back, is that the population centres of the USA were so ethnically diverse [NYT reported at least 98 languages spoken there - in 1908], that slang didn't get a look in. Sure, there is modern-ish slang where money terms are concerned, buck, fin and so on, but by comparison with the enormous range of rhyming slang from the Eastend of London, it pales into insignificance. The American back-slang doesn't meet the criteria for rhyming slang either. Don't overlook the dominance of the argot used among the criminal classes of London, called 'cant' coming to the fore in the 17th century - even Tudor English was full of surprises where slang was concerned, but the so-called Cockney rhyming slang is in a class all of its own. Romany influence is there are as well, of course, paricularly among criminals.

tac