noun General Slang

Esclop

/ˈɛsklɒp/ · noun · slang

Cockney back-slang for 'police' — 'police' spoken roughly backwards so the law wouldn't twig.

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Definitions

1

By extension, any figure of authority moving through the market — an inspector, a beadle, a weights-and-measures man — anyone whose arrival meant trouble for unlicensed trade.

“Keep an eye out, the esclop are checking scales down Petticoat Lane today.”
by community
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2

Used adjectivally in the patter to mean 'watched' or 'risky', as in territory where the law was thick on the ground.

“That pitch is too esclop for me — a uniform every twenty yards.”
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3

The police, or a single policeman. It is the word 'police' reversed and bent to fit the tongue: police → ecilop → esclop/ecslop. Street sellers used it as a coded warning so an approaching constable couldn't tell he was being clocked.

“''Esclop!'' hissed the lad on the corner, and three barrows of dodgy oranges vanished down the alley.”
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Esclop In A Sentence

He clocked the esclop coming and dropped the stolen feeb under a sack.
Two esclop on horseback cleared the whole street of barrows in minutes.
Word went down the line: esclop at the top end, shut your gobs about the takings.

Origin & Usage

Cockney costermonger back-slang, documented from the 1840s and recorded by Henry Mayhew in 'London Labour and the London Poor' (1851) and John Camden Hotten's 'Slang Dictionary' (1859), both of whom noted sellers reversing words to deceive police and customers alike.

Variants ecslopeslopslop
Tags #cockney#back-slang#british#uk#police#victorian

People Also Ask

What does esclop mean?

It means the police. It's the word 'police' said roughly backwards in Cockney costermonger back-slang, used as a coded street warning.

Is 'slop' for police related to esclop?

Mayhew and Hotten record the back-slang form, and 'slop' (police) is widely treated as a shortening of it, though some lexicographers note the derivation is debated.

Why did costermongers need a code word for police?

Much street selling was unlicensed and barrows were routinely moved on, fined or confiscated, so a warning the constable couldn't understand was practical survival.

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