The East End Language Tourists Don’t Realise Londoners Are Speaking

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You’re in a black cab heading from Liverpool Street when the driver mutters something about his “plates of meat”. You nod politely. You have absolutely no idea what he just said.

Welcome to Cockney rhyming slang — the two-hundred-year-old code language that grew up in London’s East End and has never quite gone away.

Victorian red-brick townhouses on a London street representing the East End heritage
Photo: Shutterstock

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Cockney Rhyming Slang Translator — type any phrase and we’ll tell you what it means and where it comes from.

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