press

What it means

1. 1.

   A cupboard. The kitchen press is where the cups live; the hot press is the airing cupboard around the immersion heater, and has no equivalent name anywhere else.

In use

• The mugs are in the press over the kettle.

• There's towels in the hot press.

  Note: 'Hot press' baffles visitors more reliably than any other household word.

Where it comes from

An old English and Scots word for a large cupboard, still standard in Ireland and Scotland while England narrowed it to printing and journalism. Not slang so much as the ordinary Irish word that outsiders mistake for slang.