Since all the players have voted, and since one subject line came too close for comfort, I'll close the round while I'm ahead:
Submitters in red, voters in italics

A cold, dry wind from the north in Western Australia. It typically marks the beginning of the wet season. (Faldage) tsuwm

(noun) The base of brick or stone under a furnace or oven. (Father Steve) musick

the reserves of the Vatican bank (wofa)

Jocular word for the buttocks, which enjoyed a brief vogue in the 1920s. (Bingley) Faldage

a petty cash slush fund to cover expenses for company picnics and holiday celebrations (consuelo)

Danish word for permafrost. (Ted) ASp

A form of checkers played at mealtime in the area or northern Norway known as Lapland. The playing pieces are cut squares of food (usually cheese) and as jumps are made the pieces are eaten. When Kings are crowned the opposing player chooses which food to use. (musick) W’ON

Traditional broth used to break the daily Ramadan fast in the Islam faith (Asp) Fr. Steve, Ted

A bedroll/blanket used by the Tuareg, a nomadic tribe of central Sahara and western Sahel of northwest Africa.(BelM) Bingley, Consuelo

Basic concept, central philosophy, core principle. (Actual definition. Contraction of “fundamental”. Indian English)

the area of wetlands sediment between the surface detritus and the water table.(WO’N) etaoin, wofa

a creature on the lower end of the food chain (archaic) (tsuwm)


Well done to BelM, Asp and W’ON, who snagged 2 each. Singles going the way of Faldage, musick, Bingley, Ted and Father Steve.

Dealer wins, if striking the team out while mixing metaphors counts as a win.

In the not so very unlikely event of this round being somewhat less than totally devoid of controversy, I have prepared an explanation.

The word in question has been around in written Indian English since at least 1992. It is now very well entrenched, so much so that it is often used in Hindi sentences, which is part of the story behind my choosing it.
I first came across the word in an interview with Isha Sharvani, an implausibly bendy Indian dancer/actress. My first thought was that it was an anglicisation of an Indic word, so I scoured Hindi and Urdu dictionaries looking for it, to no avail. Only then did I google it, and find the answer in the disreputable Wikipedia. Once I had that, it was easy to find it, not only in filmi articles, but in serious newspapers whose use showed that it had been accepted into the family. The whole experience reminded me not to assume that the obvious answer is too simple to be right.

Having had the word thus burned into my memory, I figured that since it is now VERY widely used in the variant of English with the largest number of speakers, it counts. If anybody has complaints, see my avatar for the procedure to follow.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/funda

http://www.rediff.com/election/pollfunda04.htm

http://snipurl.com/iotm-mq42

noho ora mai
http://maxqnzs.com/References.html