kharzie

n

British

a toilet. A term dating from the 19th cen-tury which has been in widespread use in working-class speech and in the armed services. There are many alternative spellings of this word, which is often assumed to be of African or Far Eastern colonial origin, perhaps by analogy with khaki. In fact it derives from the Latin word for house and its derivatives, such as casa in Spanish and Italian or case (meaning 'hut') in French. The word entered working-class speech in parl-yaree, the latinate jargon of tramps, ped-dlers and showpeople. Khazi was first thought suitable for broadcasting in the late 1960s and was popularised by such TV comedies as Till Death Us Do Part (written by Johnny Speight).