I own a Casio fx-85gt plus. It can perform 260 functions in less than a second, it can tell me when I’ve got a recurring decimal and it has a slide-on protective cover so that the buttons don’t get pressed when it’s in my bag. And even if the buttons do get pressed, I’ve got two-way power – solar and battery – so I’m sorted.

But as soon as I bought it I was disappointed. If I happened to be bored in a maths class, typed out 0.1134, turned my calculator upside down and slid it across to a friend I wouldn’t get so much as a smile. The numbers look too much like normal typeface. 

It’s a shame because this calculator, now recommended for GCSE and A/AS levels in most British schools is putting a knife into an age-old art form: the calculated insult.

Calculator spelling is known as ‘beghilos’ because most words have to use those letters. Hoping for a renaissance, we’ve dredged out a filthy old calculator and provided some reminders of this language’s unique vocabulary. 

Try to decipher them and tell us which ones we’ve missed in the comments below…