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
Wot Cher! Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road the chorus moves into the relative major. It was sung and danced to by Shirley Temple and Arthur Treacher in the 1939 film "The Little Princess". The song is full of working class cockney rhyming slang and idiomatic phrasing. The song tells the story of a family who live in an alley, a passageway off the street usually lined with crowded tenements, near the Old Kent Road, one of the poorest districts in London. They are visited by a toff, a well-dressed man, who must have been a gentleman because he took his topper (tophat) off in the presence of