"Congress" = 'House of Representatives'?
Laurence Horn
laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Tue Nov 7 19:51:40 UTC 2006
For a query from a journalist, does anyone have some clear examples
of the use of "Congress" to refer specifically to the House of
Representatives, excluding the Senate? This would of course parallel
the semantic narrowing of "Congressman" over a century ago:
1888 BRYCE Amer. Commw. I. xiv. 197 note, The term 'Congressman' is
commonly used to describe a member of the House of Representatives,
though of course it ought to include senators also.
[OED, s.v. "congressman"]
Partial evidence for the shift would be cases of "(in the) Congress
or (the) Senate", but these could conceivably be referring to "either
the Congress (as a whole) or the Senate specifically", such as a web
site providing a "Sample Letter to Congress or Senate". More
unambiguous would be a reference to a bill having to pass (both)
Congress and Senate, or even to candidates for Congress or Senate.
Or to the 100 members of the Senate and the 435 members of Congress.
Ah, here's one:
Citizen journalists have now investigated and submitted information
on all 435 members of Congress!
www.sunlightlabs.com/research/familybusiness/
LH
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list