From mugwumps to integuments: the glossary of Boris Johnson

Say what you like about Boris Johnson's political record or hair, one cannot deny his ability to surprise people with language. 

This morning, for instance, Johnson provoked whole swathes of the internet to ask the question: "What is a Mugwump?", after he used the word to describe Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in a column for the Sun. Supposedly 'Mugwump' is an insult he stole from Sir Nicholas Soames, who used it against him on Twitter last year, and has numerous origins, most of which have been considered at length this morning. 

Muggle-wump the monkey appears in Roald Dahl's The Twits, for instance. A Mugwump is an alien species in William S Burroughs' novel Naked Lunch. It appears in Harry Potter as an adjective describing members of the International Confederation of Wizards (Dumbledore is the Supreme Mugwump). Native Americans used it in the 19th Century to refer to important people. And, perhaps most plausibly, the Oxford English Dictionary defines mugwump as "someone who remains aloof or independent, especially politically."

Whatever his intention, it is another entry into the Glossary of Boris, a collection of words often so rare and endangered that he's become some sort of lexical David Attenborough, saving them from extinction through his high-profile use. 

Here are just a few of our favourite entries ...

Inanition

Definition: Noun. The quality or state of being empty: a. the exhausted condition that results from lack of food and water; b. the absence or loss of social, moral, or intellectual vitality or vigor.

How Boris used it: In a twist on one of the most famous bon mots of his hero, Sir Winston Churchill, Boris once said of the Liberal Democrats: "They are a void within a vacuum surrounded by a vast inanition."

Integument

Definition: Noun. Something that covers or encloses; especially:  an enveloping layer (such as a skin, membrane, or cuticle) of an organism or one of its parts.

How Boris used it: "It looks like a gigantic cocktail stick that's emerging through the integuments of a super-colossal pickled onion," he said of the Shard once. 

Obiter dicta

Definition: Noun. An incidental and collateral opinion that is uttered by a judge but is not binding. An incidental remark or observation. 

How Boris used it: Addressing the journalists who spend their mornings digging up notable things he has said or written in the past (cannot imagine how that feels), Johnson said last year: "We have a crisis in Yemen that is intractable and a burgeoning crisis on Egypt, and those are to my mind far more important than any obiter dicta you may have disinterred from 30 years of journalism."

Orotund

Definition: Adj. Marked by fullness, strength, and clarity of sound – especially of a speech.

How Boris used it: In an interview with the Telegraph's Gaby Wood about Churchill, he described the great Prime Minister's oration as, not just, "long, orotund, bombastic Churchillian circumlocutions".

Remind you of anyone, Boris?

Punctilious

Definition: Adj. Marked by or concerned about precise accordance with the details of codes or conventions.

How Boris used it: One of his favourite words. "Then there is Westminster Council, for whose punctilious planning department I have deep respect...." he once wrote in this paper, while he said, "the only thing we got wrong was that we were too punctilious..." about his controversial appointment of Veronica Wadley to the Arts Council in 2011.

Revanchist

Definition: Adj. Revenge; especially:  a usually political policy designed to recover lost territory or status.

How Boris used it: Quite a few times, actually. "Across Europe, people started to mutter about the lessons of history, and revanchism," he wrote in 2003, and more recently in reference to Putin's Russia.

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