I have, at various times, made a note to myself to buy a book that would explain the origin of some of the peculiar phrases we use, phrases such as "donkeys' years" (which, as you probably already know, mean "ages"). I know I can always look these things up on the internet, but that is just the sort of book I would love to browse through as the mood took me, and that's not something I can do so easily on the computer. Of course, there have been times when I have ordered CDs, DVDs or other books and I could quite easily have found just the book I want and added it to my order. But I could just have easily have found, when the long-awaited book arrived, it was not really what I wanted. This is the sort of book that one has to find in a real shop in order to ensure buying the right one and as I rarely get anywhere near a book shop, I've never managed to acquire what I want.
Having now Googled "donkeys' years" I find that it is quite a modern slang expression and actually started out as "donkey's ears", possibly as rhyming slang. Cockney rhyming slang, perhaps? There's a fair bit of that about, for example:
trouble and strife = wife
dog and bone = phone
apples and pears = stairs
whistle and flute = suit
plates of meat = feet
There was another form of slang we used at school: ackbay langsay. It takes quite a bit of practice to use this and even more to understand it, although the basics are simple enough. All you have to do is move the first letter of a word to the back and add "ay". Hence "ackbay" = back. Easy! (But that's not such an easy word in ackbay langsay: asyeay - pronounced see-ee-ay or C E A.)
Go on - give it a try.
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