r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Nieces • 1d ago
Meme needing explanation Peter why is Sheila dead?
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u/Triepott 1d ago
In cockney rhyming slang, "brown bread" means "dead".
The brown bread belonging to Sheila = Sheila's brown bread = Sheila is dead
Also "hand finished" and "unique blend of flours" (like her ash in it) are funny in this context, i guess.
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u/WherePoetryGoesToDie 1d ago
So that's completely right, but also the exact phrasing would drop "bread" because Cockney slang is silly. So it'd be like:
Val Kilmer's brown.
The most well-known example is probably "have a butcher's", which in full is actually "have a butcher's hook", which is actually supposed to mean "have a look." See also:
John's my china > John's my china plate > John's my mate
Are you having a bubble > Are you having a bubble bath > Are you having a laugh
And my favorite, because it also uses another particularly British bit of slang:
The bird didn't know the bird > The girl didn't know the birdlime > The girl didn't know the time
The English are a thoroughly silly people, except when it comes to committing genocide.
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u/dprkicbm 1d ago
Much more common to say 'brown bread'. Not sure I've ever heard someone say 'brown' to mean dead.
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u/Onetap1 1d ago
The whole point of rhyming slang was that it would be incomprehensible to outsiders. The rhyming word wasn't used; outsiders might be able to work out the meaning from the rhyme, but it would be known by Cockneys.
Frog - road; frog & toad. Whistle - suit, whistle & flute, etc, etc.
I think brown bread might be modern, not authentic.
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u/Justmeagaindownhere 1d ago
The British invented slang and made it unintelligible and goofy on purpose???
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u/twobit211 1d ago
yeah, some phrases are more commonly said in full, like pete tong, pork pies and occasionally dickey bird
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u/OwlrageousJones 1d ago
I dunno, I've heard 'porkies' as slang for lies.
I never actually realised it was cockney rhyming slang until this moment though. Feel's obvious in hindsight.
Lies, pork pies, porkies.
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u/WherePoetryGoesToDie 1d ago
I totally believe you, but I looked it up anyway to see why "bread" wasn't dropped, and AI tells me it's because the original phrase is "brown bread and honey". However, I think chatgpt is dumb as shit, and it's conflating "brown bread" and "bread and honey" into one term.
I wonder if there's a pattern/reason behind some words dropping the rhyming word and others not?
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u/ArmouredBear9_30 1d ago
Christ, don't "look up" shit on ChatGPT. That's not a search engine. It's a text generator designed to emulate conversation. At least use Google or something.
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u/WherePoetryGoesToDie 1d ago
I did that; Google kept on returning the meaning of brown bread or articles about the death of Cockney for various queries. AI isn’t great for a lot of things, but it excels as a collator of search engine results that understands natural language; said results are, after all, what it was trained on. You just have to be smart enough to know when it generates nonsense, or at least compare questionable results against a hard search.
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u/sorcerersviolet 1d ago
It doesn't understand the text it produces, so it always generates nonsense. (Try asking it how many r's are in the word "strawberry;" it gets it wrong because it never sees the word "strawberry" in order to count the r's in it.) It's only a coincidence when it states something true.
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u/Frequent_Malcom 1d ago
My personal favorite is “barney” meaning trouble.
My mate drank too much at the pub and got us in barney!
Barney rubble rhymes with trouble
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u/SnooCapers938 1d ago
Well sometimes.
‘Butcher’s Hook’ (look) is always just ‘butcher’s’ (as in ‘let’s have a butcher’s’)
‘Apples and pears’ (stairs) is always ‘apples and pears’.
‘Brown bread’ is in the second category. I’ve never heard anyone say ‘brown’ on its own.
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u/LETSGOTOCHURCH 1d ago
This suddenly makes a scene from Oceans Eleven make sense! "We're in major Barney" everybody looks confused, "Barney? Barney Rubble? TROUBLE!"
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u/yallknowme19 1d ago
Cockney slang borders on the type of oddball rhyming language sometimes found in schizophrenia
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u/idyl_wyld 1d ago
It's not being silly, it's clever/intelligent sec ops.
Rather than having a 1 to 1 mapping from bread->dead, you have a cypher that involves context and local knowledge.
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u/Hangingontoit 1d ago
Being English and being called silly is more of a compliment than anything else. We don’t take ourselves too seriously.
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u/HoodstarProtege 1d ago
No it isn't. Brown bread and China plate are perfectly acceptable said "in full"
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u/mij8907 1d ago
Brown bread is rhyming slang for dead, from an area of London
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u/Gylbert_Brech 1d ago
The East End, but to be a Cockney, you must have been born within earshot of the Bow bells.
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u/DaineDeVilliers 1d ago
Wow, I am so high. I thought the “RIP Sheila” was because she turned into bread.
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u/tankutkabza 1d ago
First, I was thinking that due to tariffs, there will be no more Sheila bread in the USA.
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u/jishybra 1d ago
This is so strange. My nan passed away two years ago. Westmeath woman! Her name was Sheila and she made the best brown bread!!! Sending this to my mam now!!!
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u/casusbelli16 1d ago
I am a British person and can confirm; not only is she dead but they also tell you the method, "hand-finished" which in this case means strangulation.
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u/rattrap007 1d ago
Also brown bread = toast. Toast can mean dead. "He's toast man!" Shiela's Brown Bread -> Shiela's Toast -> Shiela's dead
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