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"
Rhyming slang 1972, English rhyming slang dates from around 1840 and arose in the East End of London; John Camden Hotten's 1859 "Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words" likewise states that it originated in the 1840s ("about twelve or fifteen years ago"), but with "chaunters" and "patterers" in the Seven Dials area of London. The reference is to travelling salesmen of certain kinds, chaunters selling sheet music and patterers offered cheap, tawdry goods at fairs and markets up and down the country. Hotten's "Dictionary" included the first known "Glossary of the Rhyming Slang", which included later mainstays such as "frog