Cuss like a Cockney

Whether it’s words like ‘zounderkite’, ‘vazey’ or ‘flapdoople’, there’s always been many ways to call someone a fool. However, these pale in comparison to the heavy hitter, ‘berk’. The word emerged from early 20th-century Cockney rhyming slang, a secret jargon used by vendors and criminals.

While some were as innocent as ‘I’m going up the apples’, as in ‘apples and pears’, for ‘I’m going upstairs’, ‘berk’ was a shortened version of Berkshire Hunt, a foxhunting association. When someone said, ‘Don’t be such a berk,’ it didn’t take too much imagination to figure out what this insulting rhyme alluded to.