Multilingual Rhyming Slang

[Millie Webb]

Actually, Duane (I think it was) gave us a good example of what I am talking
about with his reply to WOTY:
quoted verbatim.......

"In an attempt to improve myself culturally, tonight I was watching Bruce
Willis in one of the iterations of Die Hard, this time on a broadcast
channel rather than a cable movie channel, and that required a great deal
of overdubbing, sometimes quite creative. Every few minutes one of the
characters would aggressively call another a "melon farmer." For those of
us who were sitting there drinking bad beer, eating chips, and watching
trashy movies, I have no doubt that "melon farmer" has become a permanent
addition to our vocabulary."

I have to add that I really really like "melon farmer".  I will have to
start using that when I am trying to watch my language around little ones.
:-)  -- Millie

----- Original Message -----
From: "Millie Webb" <millie-webb at CHARTER.NET>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Friday, January 03, 2003 4:55 PM
Subject: Re: Multilingual Rhyming Slang


> 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
> >
>