Costermonger a secret language, a code which only other costermongers understood. In her book, "Shadows of the Workhouse", Jennifer Worth observed that "Costers... spoke to each other almost entirely in back slang; incomprensible to an outsider." Many costermongers also used "rhyming slang"; where any word can be substituted with another word that rhymes with it. Examples of rhyming slang include: "tin lids" or "dustpan lids" for "kids"; "jimmy grant" for "emigrant"; "apple and pears" for "stairs"; "rubbidy dub" for "pub" and "trouble and strife" for "wife". The selection of rhyming words often suggested a symbolic association. For example, a "sorrowful tale"
Digger slang with the army or the war. One significant source of slang were the prisoner of war camps run by the Japanese, where Diggers sometimes ended up. These were the sources of many particularly strong expressions, such as "white nip" for a prisoner who collaborated with the Japanese, and "japs", "nips", "jeeps", "little yellow men", and "little yellow bastards" for the Japanese themselves. In the camps, "kippers" were the British POWs, and "cheese-eaters" the Dutch. The urinals were "pissaphones" and the stew served to prisoners was "Danube", a contraction of the rhyming slang "Blue Danube". There were many other Digger slang