slang in which a word is replaced by a rhyming phrase that is usu subsequently reduced to the first element, e.g. head becomes loaf of bread and then loaf
First noted around 1800, rhyming slang has spread from its native London to Australia and the US. Not merely doggerel, the best such slang offers an internal joke as well as the simple rhyme, e.g. ‘trouble and strife’, for wife. Arguably no longer a dialect of London's East End, rhyming slang is for many the only slang, as much a tourist attraction as black cabs and red buses — Jonathon Green