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Richard Digance

Chapter 3 - Gypsy's Kiss - Piss


Richard Digance, Cockney Rhyming Slang, The End Of The Frog and Toad, London History

Despite what purists may think, piss isn’t a swear-word at all. It comes from French derivation, just like cockney, and can even be found in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales if you can be bothered to sift through the multitude of pages written in a strange language to find it yourself. I wouldn’t bother if I were you as it’s far easier just to take my word for it. In cockney rhyming slang a piss is known as a gypsy’s kiss although I doubt if the Eastender who came up with the term was inspired by the reading of Chaucer.

It’s a term still used to this day on the odd occasion, nipping off for a gypsy. It came to be as gypsies who didn’t have toilets in their caravans used to nip off to relieve themselves behind the bushes while their wives were reading the palms of your hands for a fiver and telling you what a wonderful long life lay before you.


To continue reading this chapter click on this absolutely stunning picture I painted not unlike Botticelli.


Richard Digance, The End Of The Frog and Toad, Cockney Rhyming Slang, London History


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