KTL for architects and property types

Kitchroom: “Imagine entertaining your guests in this delightful kitchroom.”

Justin: “When the justins turn up escort them to the designer sink set in the granate work surface.”

Gizzer: “The gizzer is by far the finest feature in this palatial spread.”

Floordrobe: “All our studio flats come with fully equipped, state of the art floordrobes.”

Cruft: “ You have to expect some cruft work on a Friday afternoon.”

Cornish Thatch: “Following the financial crisis Cotswold villages are full of Cornish thatch.”

p.s there is also a word meaning a hotchpotch of architectural styles. Can you find it?

Credit Crunch Bollotics

If the credit crunch is leaving you lost for words maybe some Kitchen Table Lingo can help you make up the deficit...

Bongogobble: sales techniques for toxic financial instruments

Bocky: broken economy

Confuzzled: can’t make out what’s going on in the markets

Swoop: soup served to out of work hedgies

Testiculate: Alastair darlings’s favourite way of talking

Bollotics: how investment bankers try to justify their bonuses

Scrungle: your mood when your pension drops out of sight

Lintox: an investor in an Icelandic bank

KTL Imports

Kitchen Table Lingo contains many words whose roots lie outside Britain but which have been adapted – and sometimes changed beyond recognition – for local use.

Amongst these are foshel (shovel in food), muti (medicine), futi (more of), miningi (plenty), all of which are derived from Zambia. Howzit (hello) comes from Southern Africa

We have jojo (a fool) and maga (a dupe) from Nigeria, oldtama (a distinguished and handsome older man) from Ghana.

Hoogelly (cosy) comes from Denmark, picong (a liar) from Trinidad contributed by Sir Trevor Macdonald, jargoon harry (a pimply face) which may have Yiddish roots; kana (food) and pindoo (a country bumpkin), which are probably Punjabi and were contributed by Meera Syal plus peshawar (dust from naan bread). Oom-phoo (unwell) comes from Peru and gum-gum (remote control) from Cantonese.

There are, also, unsurprisingly a whole cohort of words which have Irish and Welsh origin.