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Whenever our telly started to go on the blink (often back in the 70's), my dad would say it's 'continental interference'.
Bloody Common Market.
Also,
Fitted Carpets - what the hell were they before they were fitted? DIY bodged?
Lino - every kitchen had 'Lino'.
Strip lighting in the kitchen, otherwise known as 'fluorescent lights'
Paraffin heaters - how we survived the fumes I will never know, let alone the paraffin itself. And what the fck was it anyway?
Not a word as such, but I remember as a kid having an electric heat lamp on the wall over the bed. It used to generate a shed load of heat. I was probably 4 foot away from death every night.
Carpet sweeper. Not sure if they still exist. They never seemed to do anything.
Vacuum cleaners were 'Hoovers'. Still hearing the word nowadays but I also hear people say 'the vacuum'.
China cabinet
Ottoman
Pelmet
"Fitted carpets" - I imagine that this goes back to the common practice of installing carpets in the centre of each room with a strip of naked floorboard surrounding it. Carpet covered the main part of the room, so you got all the practical benefits, but it didn't quite reach the walls so it was easier to cut and lay, and easier to keep clean. "Wall to wall" carpet came in gradually to replace it, say from around about the 1950s on.
"Paraffin" is simply a British name for kerosene. New Zealanders used to use it a bit too, though I doubt any would today. Similarly, "petrol" means exactly the same as what the Americans (and pretty much nobody else) call "gas" (which has to be one of the stupidest terms ever invented). As for the more specialised and less common petroleum products - things you buy in half-litre or 1-litre bottles as cleaning agents, to fuel camping stoves and lanterns, clean paint brushes, and various other uses .... don't even think about it! Every different English-speaking country uses terms like "white spirit", "metho", "methylated spirits", and "turpentine", not to mention several others, to mean completely different things. Don't go there!
Carpets and rugs are/were basically the same thing. Fitted would just mean fixed/made permanent in place of other types of flooring. Part of the interior of the house.
Probably became popular with vacuum cleaners as you wouldn't need to take them outside to clean.
Duvet sounds a bit French to me.
I first came across the word 'duvet,' from my girlfriend, who had aspirations to poshness. She'd been 'over there' and had decided they had a certain je ne sais quoi that we and especially I were sorely lacking. She also put 'mayonnaise' (Hellman's if you please!) on her plate beside the salad instead of squirting salad cream all over it, as I was wont to do (before I met her!).
Scallywag
Urchin
Bonk
Courting
Poofter
Offset "(Emp) - a little heavy on the hyperbole."