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
Rhyming slang spread beyond the purely dialectal and some examples are to be found in the mainstream British English lexicon, although many users may be unaware of the origin of those words. Most of the words changed by this process are nouns, but a few are adjectival e.g. "bales" of cotton (rotten), or the adjectival phrase "on one's tod" for "on one's own", after Tod Sloan, a famous jockey. Rhyming slang is believed to have originated in the mid-19th century in the East End of London, with several sources suggesting some time in the 1840s. According to a Routledge's slang dictionary from