This paper explores the use of culinary terms among the educated
Nigerian speakers of English and how this relates to intelligibility. Contextual
Relativity (CR) is adopted as the theoretical framework as it bridges the gap
between the study of the meanings of words and their linguistic and cultural
environment. Ninety questionnaires were analysed. Data were complemented with
selected Nigerian-based literary texts. The data were subjected to simple statistical
and linguistic analyses. Findings reveal that most Nigerian speakers of English do
not differentiate between the use of some of the culinary terms on the basis of
their semantic properties. This is attributed to socio-cultural differences, poor
knowledge of the existence of such differences and the lack of sufficient
vocabulary to account for such cooking processes. The study concludes that there
is the need to check the extent of innovativeness and to define the yardstick for the
acceptable and intelligible usage. Unfortunately, Nigerian literary writers have not
been able to enlighten Nigerians on the use of some unfamiliar culinary terms.