'Mugwump' and 'Corbynomics' celebrated by Collins Dictionary on polling day

Collins Dictionary has collected its favourite political words from elections to show how we never suffer “word fatigue” as the General Election draws to a close.

The dictionary publisher has included recently developed words include 'Mayism', 'Corbynomics' and 'mugwump' as well as 'Milifandom' and older favourites such as 'filibustering'.

Collins has classified 'Maybot' as a noun “coined by journalists due to the prime minister's repetition of key phrases, such as ‘strong and stable’, during the election campaign. 'Flugie' as US slang for a rule which only helps the rule’s maker and can be changed to prevent it being used by an opponent and 'Mugwump' is a neutral or independent person. 'Bafflegab' is deliberately confusing jargon used by parliamentarians while “snollygoster” is US slang for a politician who cares more about personal gain than serving the people. All 15 election phrases with definitions and accompanying pictures are available here.

Collins lexicographer, Helen Newstead, said: “There may be election fatigue in the UK, but we never suffer from word fatigue. Every General Election campaign gives us new words and phrases to add to the dictionary, while bringing old ones to the fore – 2017 has been no exception.”

One of the words on the list, 'Brexit', was Collins’ Word of the Year in 2016. First recorded by Collins in 2013, the word experienced an "unprecedented upsurge" of around 3,400% last year. 

With a database of more than 4.5 billions words, the Harper Collins-owned publisher keep up-to-date by constantly monitoring text from publications, websites and transcripts globally.