‘George Raft’ is British rhyming slang for a draught of air, the kind that slips in under a door or through a gap in a window frame. It is often shortened to ‘George’, with the surname dropped once the listener has caught the reference, in the way that much rhyming slang gets clipped down once it becomes familiar.
What’s the origin of the phrase ‘george raft’?
The slang works in the standard way that Cockney rhyming slang always works: a name is chosen because it rhymes with the word it stands in for, and here ‘George Raft’ rhymes with ‘draught’. George Raft was an American film actor, born George Ranft, who became identified with playing gangsters in crime films of the 1930s and 1940s. His fame in those tough, underworld roles on screen, and his reputation for similar company off screen, made his name well known enough in Britain for it to be picked up as slang.
A dialect and slang glossary describes it as “a fairly widespread piece of jocular rhyming slang inspired by the American actor of the same name (famous for his tough guy and under world roles on and off screen),” and glosses the phrase directly as meaning a draught of air. The rhyme itself is straightforward once the actor’s surname is known, since ‘Raft’ and ‘draught’ share the same sound, and the pairing would have made sense to anyone familiar with his films at the height of his popularity.
As with much rhyming slang, the full form has tended to shrink in everyday use. ‘George’ on its own is recorded as standing for ‘George Raft’, which in turn stands for ‘draught’, so the word travels two steps away from its original meaning before anyone says it. This kind of clipping is common once a piece of