Meaning of cockneyize | Babel Free

Definitions

1. To pronounce with a cockney accent.
2. To make vulgar and tasteless.

Examples

“After some sensible remarks to the effect that, before a word beginning with an aspirated “h,” (“heroic,” “harangue,” and “historical,” for instance,) “a” should be used, and not “an,” unless you choose⟳ to cockneyize and weaken the aspiration of your “h's,” it is declared that we should avoid⟳ the error of not repeating the article, and that we must say⟳, instead of "an ivory handle⟳ and silver blade," "an ivory handle⟳ and a silver blade," and instead of "an arbitrary and conventional language," "an arbitrary and a conventional language."”

“The cockneyized form⟳ of Bethlehem, "Bedlam," has long been an accepted and significant word in our vocabulary.”

“It is a great pity that an excellent dictionary should be used to cockneyize the already bad pronunciation in use⟳ in this country.”

“To sing⟳ such great statesmen and morals so pure, His first bard is Bowring—the second Tom Moore; Leigh Hunt was refused, as a cockneyized calf, And Rogers, for being too comic by half!”

“If the little history of Madison could not have⟳ been written without meddling with the caps and petticoats of its first ladies, and also selecting from the verdant brain of an old gray-headed idiot, trash concocted and cockneyized in London, then it had better ever remained a blank.”

““We complain⟳,” he says, "' of a hackneyed and cockneyized Europe; but wherever, in desperate search⟳ of the untrodden, we carry⟳ our much-labelled luggage, our bad French, our demand⟳ for a sitz-bath and pale ale, we rub off the pale bloom of local color, and establish⟳ a precedent for unlimited intrusion."”

“The squalor of the farmers above mentioned is no doubt⟳ largely the result⟳ of stupidity, but with them poverty can be pleaded ; but the rich squire-archy and nobility are not forced by lack of pence to cockneyize the countryside; but yet so soon as ever you come⟳ across a village turned smart but dull by idiotic architect-tooral-looral excrescences and changes ; the cock-tailed school, the restored church, the Lady Bountiful cottages, the lodges of the Bayswater pattern, the carpet gardening of the vicar's garden and so forth, then look⟳ out for the big house of my lord or Sir Robert, or Captain Killmister, and ou are sure to find⟳ it presently and unless it be an old house, or you have⟳ not got the real use⟳ of your eyes, you will be heartily sorry that you haven't missed it, such a lump of ugliness and vulgarity it will be.”

CEFR level