cockney

• n. ロンドン訛り; ロンドンっ子
• adj.ロンドンっ子; ロンドン弁

cock、コック。-文字通り、コックの卵。文字通り、雄鶏が産む卵のことで、ちょっとアレな人を侮蔑的に表現するのに使われる。

cockney

cockney: [14] Etymologically, a cockney is a ‘cock’s egg’ (it comes from cokene, the old genitive plural of cock, and ey, the Middle English word for ‘egg’). This was a medieval term for a small or misshapen egg, the ‘runt’ of the clutch, supposedly laid by a cock, and it came to be applied (probably egged on by Middle English cocker ‘pamper’) to a ‘pampered child’ or ‘mother’s boy’.

In the 16th century we find that it has passed on to ‘town dweller’ (the notion being that people who lived in towns were soft and effete compared with countrymen), and by around 1600 it had started to mean more specifically ‘someone born in the city of London’. The popular definition ‘someone born within the sound of Bow bells’ is first reported by the lexicographer John Minsheu in 1617.
=> cock, egg

cockney (n.)

c. 1600, usually said to be from rare Middle English cokenei, cokeney "spoiled child, milksop" (late 14c.), originally cokene-ey "cock's egg" (mid-14c.). Most likely disentangling of the etymology is to start from Old English cocena "cock's egg" -- genitive plural of coc "cock" + ?g "egg" -- medieval term for "runt of a clutch," extended derisively c. 1520s to "town dweller," gradually narrowing thereafter to residents of a particular neighborhood in the East End of London. Liberman, however, disagrees:

[I]n all likelihood, not the etymon of ME cokeney 'milksop, simpleton; effeminate man; Londoner,' which is rather a reshaping of [Old French] acoquiné 'spoiled' (participle). However, this derivation poses some phonetic problems that have not been resolved.

The accent so called from 1890, but the speech peculiarities were noted from 17c. As an adjective in this sense, from 1630s.

1. He had coarsened his voice to an approximation of Cockney .

彼は自分のアクセントを下品にし、ロンドン東区の発音に近づいた。

2.The Cockney accent was put on for effect.

このロンドン弁は、印象付けるためにわざと装填されています。

3.Pomeroy was a cockney barrow-boy at heart.

ボマーロイは本質的にロンドンの街の行商人だ。

4.The man spoke with a Cockney accent.

その人はロンドン東区なまりで話しています。

5. Cockney is the colourful dialect spoken in the East End of London.

ロンドン方言は、ロンドン東区で話されている特色のある地方語です。