>A lot of these words crept into English, from the old days of the Raj. Girls, for instance, of, let's say, bad reputation, are sometimes referred to as "bints". A genuine item is "pukka", et al. :-)

Oh, I was not aware that spoken English has been proliferated by such Indian words to this extent. Pukka I know means Solid, I am not sure of Bints, maybe a corruption of the pronounciation made into a word. Anyway the one most remembered word by me is Juggernaut, seems it was derived from the name of our God "Jagannath", there is a procession of this God and it is a huge procession, the size of which from the which the word Juggernaut was derived.