Cockneyize

verb

verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To pronounce with a cockney accent.

    "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.""

  2. 2
    To make vulgar and tasteless.

    "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!"

Example

More 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.""

Etymology

From cockney + -ize.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.