"raspberry" < raspberry tart ? : Cockney rhyming slang?

[Rudolph C Troike]

A colleague of mine sent this inquiry, followed by a response from another
colleague. Does anyone have any corroborating or disconfirming evidence?


---------- Forwarded message ----------

I recently came across an etymology, perhaps in a column by William
Safire, that I hope you can corroborate or explode. It concerns the word
"raspberry," as in "Some members of the audience were rude enough to give
the speaker the raspberry."  A dictionary definition of the word used in
this sense: "a derisive or contemptuous sound made by vibrating the
extended tongue and the lips while exhaling." I think we all know what it
sounds like.

The claimed etymology: that it comes from Cockney rhyming slang and that
its full form is "raspberry tart."  The rhyme, I assume, is with
"fart."  E.g., "Someone made a Godawful smelly raspberry tart."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The response from another colleague was as follows:

>The etymology is not at all clear. The OED on-line,
>def. 4., cautiously states "[App. an ellipt. use of raspberry tart
>(b) below.]," without further explanation, but the editors seem not entirely
>confident in the derivation. They equate it with "Bronx cheer." There seem
>to be in the examples in 4a. and 4b. two strikingly different meanings. One,
>documented as early as 1890), is the sound that could have been the source
>of the proposed Cockney slang term (4a.). The other a more generalized
>sense, which appears first in a Wodehouse novel in 1920, indicates rebuke or
>disapproval (4b.). In some of the quotations in 4b. any suggestion of the
>sense in 4a. would violate decorum. (I can't imagine Jeeves giving a Bronx
>cheer in any circumstances.) Without direct testimony as to the origin of
>the sense, it is hard to say what the truth is. The attribution to rhyming
>slang could be a popular etymology, plausible but undocumented, created to
>fill a vacuum.
>
>The reportedly widespread use in Glasgow in 1912 makes me wonder whether the
>source isn't other than Cockney slang, which is easy to invoke when no other
>explanation is apparent. But why "_raspberry_ tart"? Why not apple tart or
>gooseberry tart or bilberry tart or strawberry tart or the like? The rhyme
>doesn't explain the raspberry part, does it? The only evidence the OED gives
>is late: "1959 I. & P. OPIE Lore & Lang. Schoolch. i. 9 Breaking wind was,
>at one time, by the process of rhyming slang, known as a 'raspberry tart'."
>Maybe the Opies give more proof in the work cited, but the evidence for
>their statement is not in the OED.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

        The originator of the query posted another finding that the term
also occurred in an 1892 poem, where the meaning was clearly "heart",
which would also fit with rhyming slang.

        "Then I sallied forth with careless air, and contented raspberry
tart."

        Can anyone improve on this information?

        Rudy