bowbell
Definitions
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. One born within hearing distance of Bow-bells; a cockney.
The ‘Bow-bells’ refer to bells of the St Mary-le-Bow, a historic church in London.
Examples
“We should have shown provincials our intense contempt of their of the English tongue, and in the honour of Bowbell have rhymed tobacco with Long Acre, as the days of old.”
“We indulge no antipathies against Great Britain, whose intellectual greatness we profoundly revere, but we detest and the haughty insolence, the arrogant, prejudiced, and calumniating spirit of St Giles vagabonds, Wapping waitingmaids, and Bowbell cockneys.”
