[f. as prec. + -ISM.]
1. Quality characteristic of a cockney; cockney manners, speech, etc.
1828. Blackw. Mag., XXIII. 373/1. His [Leigh Hunt’s] account of the meeting is a precious piece of Cockneyism.
1850. L. Hunt, Autobiog., III. xxiii. 187. The charge of Cockneyism frightened the booksellers.
1864. Lowell, Study Wind. (1886), 104. Men … had so steeped their brains in London literature as to mistake Cockneyism for European culture.
2. A cockney characteristic (e.g., in idiom or pronunciation).
1866. G. Macdonald, Ann. Q. Neighb., xiii. (1878), 254. [He] had not caught up many cockneyisms instead.
1867. Ch. & State Rev., 12 Jan., 31. Exaggerated cockneyisms.
