Multilingual Rhyming Slang

[Millie Webb]

Maybe I do not fully understand the question here.  The way I read the
original, the questioner was talking about "spoonerisms" that became
productive slang terms for something perhaps better left unsaid in its
original form.  Is that what "we" are talking about here, or almost
universal tendencies to link together words that sound alike (such as
"teeny-weeny" for very small) to emphasize a quality or amount?  Or do we
mean general "spoonerisms" that come to mean something only to speakers of
that Argot?  ("Wheeze gasp and mutter" only means "please pass the butter"
to a person in the subset of people who know of [I think] Mrs
Piggle-Wiggle.)  How large does the subset of people to which it makes
sense, have to be, for it to "count"?
I am sure I can think of some examples in both German and English, if I
first know we are talking about the same phenomenon, and which definition
one wants to use for it.  -- Millie
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kim & Rima McKinzey" <rkmck at EARTHLINK.NET>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Friday, January 03, 2003 3:40 PM
Subject: Re: Multilingual Rhyming Slang


> >In French there is something called "contrepèterie" (the word is
> >known since 1582):
> >"Interversion des lettres ou des syllabes d'un ensemble de mots
> >spécialement choisis, afin d'en obtenir d'autres dont l'assemblage
> >ait également un sens, de préférence burlesque ou grivois. Ex.:
> >Femme folle à la messe (Rabelais, 1532) pour femme molle à la fesse."
> >This definition (from Petit Robert, Dictionnaire...) seems to me to
> >correspond very well with the definition of Rhyming Slang.
>
> It seems to me that's more of a Spoonerism.
>
> Rima
>