h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

With regard to the word 'Aris' for arse, this is a particularly clever one. Obviously Aris doesn't rhyme with arse. The way it works is that 'Aris' is short for Aristotle which rhymes with Bottle, which gives you Bottle & Glass = Arse! Very amusing!

The origin of Cockney rhyming slang was to hold a conversation so that the police and their informers could not understand you were planing a 'job' or some other nefarious activity. It wasn't until well into the 20th century that it came into general usage. My mother who was born in 1916 in Middlesex street, E1 and lived there until just before the outbreak of the second world war didn't know or understand it at all.
Janet

I think it's interesting that it's a 'language' that keeps evolving- for instance I used to hear people say 'Eartha Kitt' to describe a particular bodily function (c'mon, use your imagination!), and now they are more likely to use 'Bradd Pitt'. Similarly, one of the men in the office refers to his 'Nigel Benn', or pen.

One of my favourites is 'Phil the Greek and the Old Baked Bean'

Also 'Tom Tit' gets used quite alot.

Anyone know where 'kettle' for watch derives from. Is it 'kettle and hob', fob?

I believe it is, me old china!!!

How about:

I can't come out tonight, I've got a conan on me gregory!

conan doyle = boil
gregory peck = neck

for me it was always 'going for a tom tit', which was often akin, in the pleasure stakes, to a 'sherman'.
an unpleasant person was a 'merchant banker' or, if particularly obnoxious, a bit of a 'james hunt'.

just picking up on some other threads i always thought that 'raspberry' was a physically disabled person - the blockheads used to refer to ian dury as a raspberry (ripple).

out of interest, of people i knew who could actually claim to be cockneys... the slang i heard most frequently (from memory!) :
-mutton, syrup, barnet, boat, pony, jimmy, aris, ruby, bob hope, tin tac
and that things have gone 'reel and cotton'

There's also "Chalfonts"- Piles, short for "Chalfont St Giles"

or 'farmers' - Farmer Giles

Things are rarely that simple: 'Aris' for 'arse' might well be (as suggested) for 'Aris-totle' leading to 'Bottle & Glass' (NOT meaning 'class' as in 'He's lost his bottle'), but I think it more likely to be for 'Arris rail' (fence component) to signify 'tail', as when Mellors says to Lady C: 'Tha's got a fine tail on thee.'
(Of course, it could even be a deliberate combination of the two ideas!)
I have seen very few instances of two-stage rhyming slang, where you need then to decode the decoded version!
P.S. Rhyming-slang ambiguities could be an interesting field, here are a few:
Bottle and Glass (arse, class)
Rory O'More (floor, whore)
Dustbin Lid (kid, quid=£1, 50p=half-a-quid, also racist use)
Currant Bun (sun, son)
Of course, there is often much more much ambiguity when the second part is dropped, e.g. 'Jimmy' = 'Jimmy Riddle' = piddle, but also 'Jimmy' = 'Jimmy O'Goblin' = golden sovereign!