First off, I understand HOW rhyming slang works, by replacing a word with one from a term that rhymes (i.e. “He’s up the apples”, with ‘apples’ coming from the phrase ‘apples and pears’, where ‘pears’ rhymes with ‘stairs’) but my question is, is there an established “canon” or can you just make up new ones? If so, how does that work?
For instance, if I said, “See you later, mate, I’m going for a Challenger,” how reasonably sure could I be that the listener could follow my logic of ‘Challenger’ from ‘Challenger tank’ rhyming with ‘wank’?
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by common consent, and mutual prior agreement.
theirs no set canon for the slang, its explicitly intended to be obscuring (the whole point was to allow thieves to discuss the details of a crime with each other, in the open, in a manner that was deniable if a witness reported them to the police).
basically, you just agree with the other person your speaking to that your using the phrase “challenger tank”. some other group might settle on “westminster Bank” instead for the same rhyme, and a third might use “Tom Hanks”.
as various phrases are used, some become more popular and spread to become the “standard” ones used for that rhyme.
There’s no canon for any slang. If anyone tells you there is, they’re telling porkies. What “counts” is whatever people understand and repeat. If you wanted to introduce a new slang, it’s best to start with something that a person only has to make one leap to understand. From there, once enough people use that, you can add another layer of complexity.
You would first need to establish challenger tank as the canon first, and then can think about reducing it to challenger only.
While you’re on this sort of a topic, check out the use of kenning in Old Norse, Old English, and Icelandic.
There is an episode of the podcast Stuff You Should Know about this very subject! Check it out.
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