ScoMo the ‘battologist’ and other words for your election vocab

Barnaby Joyce is a classic breed-bate: one who is always looking for an argument or is ready to pick a fight. Marise Payne is more lucifugous, fleeing the light. Illustration: Glen Le Lievre

Struggling to find the perfect way to describe this never-ending election campaign? How about suspire, a 16th-century word for uttering a deep and meaningful sigh. Or forwaked, weary from watching and waiting for something that never seems to materialise.

Curfuggle is a great bipartisan term that could stand in for gaffe; a total mess or state of utter disarray. Zwoddered is a drowsy, stupid state of body and mind.

Anyone who has listened to Scott Morrison will know that he’s a battologist. It’s a 17th century term for an individual who repeats the same story over and over, even when all the facts contradict them. At press conferences the prime minister employs psittacism: the meaningless or mechanical repetition of words, from the Latin for parrot.

Anthony Albanese has been known to noggle economics, that is, to manage something with difficulty or just scrape through. Adam “Goggle It” Bandt is guilty of a sparple: a tactic to deflect unwanted attention from one thing by making a big deal of another.

Barnaby Joyce is a classic breed-bate: one who is always looking for an argument or is ready to pick a fight. Marise Payne is more lucifugous, fleeing the light.

Greg Hunt is known for his lalochezia: the relief of stress, anxiety, pain, and frustration through swearing. Hence how Labor came to the Shakespearean shout out “Alas poor Yorick”, each time the retiring health minister took to his feet in Question Time.

War drum beater Peter Dutton could be accused of roundaboutation, using bloviating or evasive talk that focuses on everything but the subject in hand. Richard Colbeck is more dumfungled: used up, worn out and approaching stupefaction. And Alan Tudge is a hingum-tringum: just about hanging together.

Someone who insists that they are right despite clear evidence that they are not, aka Craig Kelly, was known in the 16th century as a mumpsimus. Clive Palmer typifies a snollygoster: an unprincipled person in office who is motivated by personal rather than public gain.

Pauline Hanson is a quiddler: 18th-century speak for someone who pays extra attention to trivial matters as a way of avoiding the important ones. Her sidekicks, Malcolm Roberts and George Christensen, epitomise gobemouches: gullible, open-mouthed individuals who believe everything they are told.

Whereas Bob Katter is known to bamblusterate – a blend of bamboozle and bluster. Or as Aussies colloquially call it, shooting from the hip … literally when it comes to the Mad Hatter’s idea to arm all teens in schools with weapons.

Jacqui Lambie personifies a cacafuego – a small, swaggering braggart or spitfire convinced of their own prowess. It comes from the Spanish for fire-shitter.

Kevin Rudd suffers from empleomania – the desire to hold office or wield power, whatever the cost. Malcolm Turnbull is more of a supercilian; a contemptuous individual who considers most people to be beneath them. It comes from the Latin word for raised eyebrow.

Then there’s Tony Abbott and thinkache, the bone-weariness that comes from too much (painful) thinking. Shit happens when you’re the suppository of all wisdom.

If you listen to politicians, pork barrelling is struthious – something that is said to resemble an ostrich; avoiding reality or pretending it doesn’t exist.

Whereas a waw-worm is one who insists that they have done nothing wrong, despite evidence to the contrary; and a flagitious person is said to be unspeakably wicked; guilty of heinous crimes. You can choose your own adventure to assign those terms to current/former members of parliament.