cockney

• n. 倫敦腔；倫敦人
• adj. 倫敦人的；倫敦方言的

cock, 公雞。-ey, 蛋，詞源同egg .字面意思即公雞下的蛋，貶義用法，形容拿腔拿調的人。

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.

他讓自己的口音變得粗俗起來，接近倫敦東區的發音。

來自柯林斯例句

2. The Cockney accent was put on for effect.

這倫敦腔是為了給人以深刻印象而故意裝出來的。

來自柯林斯例句

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

波默羅伊本質上就是個倫敦街頭小販。

來自柯林斯例句

4. The man spoke with a Cockney accent.

那人說話帶倫敦東區口音。

來自柯林斯例句

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

倫敦方言是在倫敦東區講的頗有特色的地方語.

來自《現代漢英綜合大詞典》