marianne.macdonald@lineone.net said:
>>Anybody else know?
>
>20c Brit slang; earliest printed examples about 50-55
years ago. Rhyming
>slang: grasshopper - copper; if you grass
somebody up to a copper,
>you're a grass.
>
>MM
Cheers! I should really get some sort of OED, but they're so
expensive and I can't be bobbing down the library every five
minutes. It's a shame that Peelers didn't stick around
longer, perhaps we might have ended up talking about Potatoes
and Super Potatoes. I'm sure I'm being an old
stick-in-the-mud but modern slang (and I don't spend much
time in prison yards either) doesn't seem as inventive as
classic cockney rhymning slang, of which there are several
fascinating dictionaries and histories.
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