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Cockney is a dialect of the English language, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by Londoners with working-class and lower middle-class roots. The term Cockney is also used as a demonym for a person from the East End, [1] [2] [3] or, traditionally, born within earshot of Bow Bells. [4] [5] [6]
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The word Cockney has had a pejorative connotation, originally deriving from cokenay, or cokeney, a late Middle English word of the 14th century that meant, literally, “cocks’ egg” (i.e., a small or defective egg, imagined to come from a rooster—which, of course, cannot produce eggs).
- Adam Jacot de Boinod
Nov 22, 2017 · The original meaning of cockney is a child too tenderly or delicately nurtured, one kept in the house and not hardened by out-of-doors life; hence applied to citizens, as opposed to the hardier inhabitants of the country, and in modern times confined to the citizens of London.
Apr 1, 2023 · The most likely disentangling of the etymology is to start from Old English cocena "cock's egg" — genitive plural of coc "cock" + æg "egg" — medieval term for "runt of a clutch" (as though "egg laid by a cock"), extended derisively c. 1520s to "town dweller," gradually narrowing thereafter to residents of a particular neighborhood in the East En...
What is Cockney? The word cockney has resolutely resisted any simple etymology. It is first noted in 1362, when it meant a ‘cock’s egg’—that is, a defective one.
Mar 8, 2022 · Historically, the term ‘Cockney’ denoted working-class status. Multiple sources identify the 1840s as the likely decade of Cockney rhyming slang’s inception. But it’s a notoriously difficult dialect to trace. Here’s a short history of Cockney rhyming slang. Contested origins
Apr 6, 2023 · It is thought that the word Cockney originates from the Norman word for a sugar cake, cocaigne. The Normans called London the ‘Land of Sugar Cake’, and the name has stuck with some variations over the years. In the 1360s, the writer William Langland also used the term ‘cockeney’ to mean cock’s egg.
