Many of the words are sexual, anatomical, or euphemisms for police. ” Its vocabulary is derived from a mishmash of Italian, Romani, Yiddish, Cockney rhyming slang, backslang-as in riah to mean “hair”-and cant, a language used by 18th-century traveling performers, criminals, and carnival workers.
Polari is a language of, in linguistic professor Paul Baker’s words, “ fast put-downs, ironic self-parody and theatrical exaggeration. But recently it’s been popping up again, even appearing in the lyrics of a song on David Bowie’s final album. Following a rapid decline in the 1970s, Polari has all but disappeared. Vada (“look at”), dolly eek (a pretty face), and chicken (a young guy) are all words from the lexicon of Polari, a secret language used by gay men in Britain at a time when homosexuality was illegal. These days, very few people know what it means to vada a chicken’s dolly eek.