What is a cockney?
Traditionally, a true Cockney is anybody born within the sound of Bow bells ( the bells of the church of St Mary-le-Bow in the East End of London). In fact, the term is commonly used to denote people who come from a wider area of the innermost eastern suburbs of London and also an adjoining area south of the Thames.
“Cockney” is also used to describe a strong London accent and, like any such local accent, is associated with working-class origins.
A feature of Cockney speech is rhyming slang, in which, for example, “wife” is referred to as “trouble and strife”, and “stairs” as “apples and pears”(usually shortened to “apples”). Some rhyming slang has passed into general informal British usage; some examples are “use your loaf” , which means “think” (from “loaf of bread”=”head”) and “have a butcher’s, which means “have a look” (from ‘butcher’s hook’= ‘look’)
To rain cats and dogs. Meaning ‘to rain extremely heavily’, there is no very convincing explanation for this phrase. According to Morris, it comes from the days when street drainage was so poor that a heavy rain storm could easily drown cats and dogs. After the storm people would see the number of dead cats and dogs and assume they had fallen out of the sky. Brewer suggests, on the other hand, that in northern mythology cats were supposed to have great influence on the weather and dogs were a signal of wind, ‘thus cat may be taken as a symbol of the downpouring rain, and the dog of the strong gusts of wind accompanying a rain-storm’.
