Michael Quinion, lexicographer and scholar of language, finds it hard to work out which of the favourite British buzzwords of 2000 vexed him most. Was it "WHASSSUUUP?" or was it "political football"? The first had been around for months, thanks to the Budweiser TV ads.

But then in the closing weeks of the year "political football" - a platitude which he hoped had died in the 1970s - suddenly came back into currency.

That was thanks to William Hague's reference to the Damilola Taylor murder. "It's one of those cliches which makes me want to throw things at my radio every time I hear it," Mr Quinion said.

The collection has been compiled in separate batches by Nigel Wilcockson, editor of the New Penguin English Dictionary, and his staff, and by Mr Quinion, a contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary, former assistant editor of the Oxford Dictionary of New Words and founder of the popular website World Wide Words.

The Penguin list will be used as a shortlist for the next edition of its dictionary. It contains one word - "upspeaking" - which is thought to be the dictionary world's first recognition of a new speech habit which has swept the world in little over 20 years since it began in a valley in California. Mr Wilcockson defines the habit as "finishing your sentences with an upward inflection, as if asking a question rather than making a statement".

Penguin staff were excited to hear Jamie Oliver using the word "pukka" in its original anglicised sense of "first rate" or "excellent", after almost a century in which phrases like "pukka sahib" had been used as terms of mockery against the former British empire.

Another phrase, "innit?" was revived by the white rap comedian Ali G after first being put on people's lips by Harry Enfield's character Stavros as a satire on poor English-speaking on late 1980s television.

In vogue

Watercooler TV
Television programme obsessively discussed in offices

Chad
Waste material removed from punched cards

M-commerce
Trying to sell things via mobile phones

Scooby Doo
Rhyming slang for clue, as in "I don't have a Scooby Doo")

Domestic goddess
As in Nigella Lawson

B2B/B2C
Business-to-business and business-to-consumer business

Mommy-hacking
Parents' efforts to track or restrict kids' internet/email activities

Economy class syndrome
Blood clots caused by long-haul flights

Useful link
Michael Quinion's website: www.worldwidewords.org