How did speakers of Cockney Rhyming Slang propagate an agreed set of word substitutions?

by Javanz
skivian

I think you're thinking about this all wrong. it's not like the Cockney poor would meet in a semi-regular basis and agree on this stuff.

it would advance like any other word. someone starts using it, and someone else likes that word, and starts using it too, and so on and so forth until it's fairly ubiquitous.

tl/dr ask /r/etymology