folding/folding stuff/folding money/folding green = banknotes, especially to differentiate or emphasise an amount of money as would be impractical to carry or pay in coins, typically for a night out or to settle a bill. Folding, folding stuff and folding money are all popular slang in London.
foont/funt = a pound (?1), from the mid-1900s, derived from the German word 'pfund' for the UK pound.
french/french loaf = four pounds, most likely from the second half of the 1900s, cockney rhyming slang for rofe (french loaf = rofe), which is backslang for four, also meaning four pounds. Easy when you know how..
garden/garden gate = eight pounds (?8), cockney rhyming slang for eight, naturally extended to eight pounds. In spoken use 'a garden' is eight pounds. Incidentally garden gate is also rhyming slang for magistrate, and the plural garden gates is rhyming slang for rates. The word garden features strongly in London, in famous place names such as Hatton Garden, the diamond quarter in the central City of London, and Covent Garden, the site of the old vegetable market in West London, and also the term appears in sexual euphemisms, such as 'sitting in the garden with the gate unlocked', which refers to a careless pregnancy.
generalise/generalize = a shilling (1/-), from the mid 1800s, thought to be backslang. Also meant to lend a shilling, apparently used by the middle classes, presumably to avoid embarrassment. Given that backslang is based on phonetic word sound not spelling, the conversion of shilling to generalize is just about understandable, if somewhat tenuous, and in the absence of other explanation is the only known possible derivation of this odd slang.
gen net/net gen = ten shillings (1/-), backslang from the 1800s (from 'ten gen').
grand = a thousand pounds (?1,000 or $1,000) Not pluralised in full form. Shortened to 'G' (usually plural form also) or less commonly 'G's'. Originated in the USA in the 1920s, logically an association with the literal meaning - full or large.
greens = money, usually old-style green coloured pound notes, but actully applying to all money or cash-earnings since the slang derives from the cockney rhyming slang: 'greengages' (= wages).
2.3 Phonetic peculiarities of slang
While many slang words introduce new concepts, some of the most effective slang provides new expressions--fresh, satirical, shocking--for established concepts, often very respectable ones. Sound is sometimes used as a basis for this type of slang, as, for example, in various phonetic distortions (e.g., pig Latin terms). It is also used in rhyming slang, which employs a fortunate combination of both sound and imagery. Thus, gloves are "turtledoves" (the gloved hands suggesting a pair of billing doves), a girl is a "twist and twirl" (the movement suggesting a girl walking), and an insulting imitation of flatus, produced by blowing air between the tip of the protruded tongue and the upper lip, is the "raspberry," cut back from "raspberry tart." Most slang, however, depends upon incongruity of imagery, conveyed by the lively connotations of a novel term applied to an established concept. Slang is not all of equal quality, a considerable body of it reflecting a simple need to find new terms for common ones, such as the hands, feet, head, and other parts of the body. Food, drink, and sex also involve extensive slang vocabulary. Strained or synthetically invented slang lacks verve, as can be seen in the desperate efforts of some sportswriters to avoid mentioning the word baseball--e.g., a batter does not hit a baseball but rather "swats the horsehide," "plasters the pill," "hefts the old apple over the fence," and so on. [31]
If we try to characterize rhyming slang in particular, we can find such phonetic features:
1.Monophthongization
This affects the lexical set mouth vowel. Wells believes that it is widely agreed that the "mouth" vowel is a "touchstone for distinguishing between "true Cockney" and popular London" and other more standard accents. Cockney usage would include monophthongization of the word.
Example:
mouth = mauf rather than mouth
2. Glottal stop
Wells describes the glottal stop as also particularly characteristic of Cockney and can be manifested in different ways such as "t" glottalling in final position. A 1970s study of schoolchildren living in the East End found /p,t,k/ "almost invariably glottalized" in final position.
Examples:
cat = up = sock =
It can also manifest itself as a bare as the realization of word internal intervocalic /t/
Waterloo = Waerloo City = Ciy A drink of water = A drin' a wa'er A little bit of bread with a bit of butter on it = A li'le bi' of breab wiv a bi' of bu'er on i'.
As would be expected, a Cockney speaker uses fewer glottal stops for t or d than a "London" speaker. However, there are some words where the omission of t has become very accepted.
Gatwick = Gawick
Scotland = Sco'land
statement = Sta'emen
network = Ne work
3. Dropped h at beginning of words (Voiceless glottal fricative)
In the working-class ("common") accents throughout England,h dropping at the beginning of certain words is heard often, but it`s certainly heard more in Cockney, and in accents closer to Cockney. The usage is strongly stigmatized by teachers and many other standard speakers.
house = `ouse
hammer = `ammer
4. TH fronting
Another very well known characteristic of Cockney is th fronting which involves the replacement of the dental fricatives, and by labiodentals [f] and [v] respectively.
thin = fin
brother = bruvver
three = free
bath = barf
5. Vowel lowering
dinner = dinna
marrow= marra
6. Prosody
The voice quality of Cockney has been described as typically involving "chest tone" rather than "head tone" and being equated with "rough and harsh" sounds versus the velvety smoothness of the Kensington or Mayfair accents spoken by those in other more upscale areas of London.
7. Rhyme
Cockney English is also characterized by its own special vocabulary and usage in the form of "cockney rhyming slang". The way it works is that you take a pair of associated words where the second word rhymes with the word you intend to say, then use the first word of the associated pair to indicate the word you originally intended to say. Some rhymes have been in use for years and are very well recognized, if not used, among speakers of other accents.
"apples and pears" -stairs
"plates of meat" -feet
There are others, however, that become established with the changing culture.
"John Cleese" - cheese
"John Major" - pager
2.4 Morphological characteristics of slang
Slang comes to be a very numerous part of the English language. It is considered to be one of the main representatives of the nation itself. The birth of new words results from the order of the modern society. Slang arises due to our propensity for replacing old denominations by expressive ones. And yet the growing popularity of every new creation prevents it from remaining fresh and impressive. What was felt as strikingly witty yesterday becomes dull and stale today, since everybody knows it and uses it. So how do the slang words come to life? There are several ways of slang words formation:
1. Various figures of speech participate in slang formation.
For example: upperstorey-head (metaphor)
skirt-girl (metonymy)
killing-astonishing (hyperbole)
some-excellent or bad (understatement)
clear as mud (irony)
Slang items usually arise by the same means in which new words enter the general vocabulary.
2. The slang word can appear thanks to the recycling of the words and parts of words, which are already in the language.
Expressions may take form as metaphors, similes, and other figures of speech (dead as a doornail).Some slang formation follow the rules of Standard English. F.e., slang behaves regularly in the forming of denominal adjectives by -y suffixation (e.g. cbordy- moody, cbord-a bad mood, gobby-mouthy, slang gob-mouth) and deverbal adjectives by - able suffixation (shaggable- slang to shag -to fornicate). It uses the suffix -ette to denote female sex as in punkette (a female punk). It uses the verbal prefix de- to convey a sense of removal or deprivation to the base as in de-bag -to remove trousers. [8, 12]
Words may acquire new meanings (cool, cat). A narrow meaning may become generalized (fink, originally a strikebreaker, later a betrayer or disappointer) or vice-versa (heap, a run-down car). Most affixation tend to belong to extragrammatical morphology, though they exhibit a certain regularity and stability.
Slang has some productive suffixes which are either novel (eg. -o/oo, -eroo, -ers) or used differently from Standard English. The slang suffix -o means either ``a stupid unintelligent person``(dumbo, thicko) or a person with a particular habbit or characteristic (eg. Saddo, sicko). This suffix seems to be productive in the making of forms of address (kiddo, yobbo)
A cumulation of the suffix - er with -o/oo produces -eroo in slang as in smackeroo, meaning the same as smacker but with a more light - hearted slant.
Another profilic slang cumulation is -ers as in some pair nouns (cobblers, conkers, knackers), plural nouns (choppers-teeth, trousers) and uncountable nouns (ackers-money, uppers- amphetamine). The slang suffix -ers often occurs after abbreviation as in bathers (bathing costumes), brekkers (breakfast), taters (potatoes).
The suffix -s lost its inflectional meaning in slang and conveys new meaning to the base: afters- dessert, flicks- cinema, messages- groceries.
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