Rhyming slang and toad" (the main road) and "apples and pears (stairs), as well as many more obscure examples, e.g. "Battle of the Nile" (a tile, a vulgar term for a hat), "Duke of York" (take a walk), and "Top of Rom" (home). It remains a matter of speculation whether rhyming slang was a linguistic accident, a game, or a cryptolect developed intentionally to confuse non-locals. If deliberate, it may also have been used to maintain a sense of community, or to allow traders to talk amongst themselves in marketplaces in order to facilitate collusion, without customers knowing what they were saying,
Rhyming slang or by criminals to confuse the police (see thieves' cant). The English academic, lexicographer and radio personality Terence Dolan has suggested that rhyming slang may have been invented by Irish immigrants to London "so the actual English wouldn't understand what they were talking about." Many examples of rhyming slang are based on locations in London, such as "Peckham Rye", meaning "tie" (as in necktie), which dates from the late 19th century; "Hampstead Heath", meaning "teeth" (usually as "Hampsteads"), which was first recorded in 1887; and "Barnet Fair", meaning "hair", which dates from the 1850s. By the mid-20th century many rhyming