Rhyming slang all cases, omitting, from the end of the phrase, the secondary rhyming word (which is thereafter implied), making the origin and meaning of the phrase elusive to listeners not in the know. The form that is followed is made clear with the following example. The rhyming phrase "apples and pears" evolved to mean "stairs". Following the pattern of omission, "and pears" is dropped, thus the spoken phrase "I'm going up the apples" means "I'm going up the stairs". The following are further common examples of these phrases: Thus a construction of the following type could conceivably arise: "It nearly knocked
Apples and oranges example, apples and pears are compared in Danish, Dutch, German, Spanish, Swedish, Croatian, Czech, Romanian, Hungarian, Italian, Slovene, Luxembourgish, Serbian, and Turkish. In fact, in the Spanish-speaking world, a common idiom is "sumar peras con manzanas", that is, "to add pears and apples"; the same thing applies in Italian ("sommare le mele con le pere") and Romanian ("a aduna merele cu perele"). In Portuguese, the expression is "comparar laranjas com bananas" (compare orange to banana). In Czech, the idiom "míchat jablka s hruškami" literally means 'to mix apples and pears'. Some languages use completely different items, such as the Serbian