Has "congressman" ALWAYS meant "representative, not senator"?

[Victor Steinbok]

  I have communicated with a number of correspondents who use 2. in most
instances, but occasionally use 1. in reference to the entire
congressional delegation of a state. Normally, the latter is plural. I
can't say offhand if I've ever seen them use it to describe a single
person, as usually such a description of a single Senator uses the term
Senator. The same applies to honorific address--if you know that the one
person you're addressing is a Senator, it would be silly to address
him/her as "Congressman/woman" if there is a perfectly appropriate and
gender-neutral term Senator. So the question is, how do you address a
mixed group of Representatives and Senators. The only time when you
might need to use "Congressman" would be if you are describing a generic
member of Congress, without a tie to specific chamber (e.g., describing
a rule proscribing conflicts of interest). I don't have specific samples
from correspondence and, obviously, searching would not help without
reading every single message. If I spot one in the wild, I'll be happy
to forward it, although there is no guarantee it will be timely.

     VS-)

On 10/20/2010 12:37 PM, Neal Whitman wrote:
> For election day, I'm writing a column about the usage of "congressman" to
> mean "representative", as opposed to "member of Congress, from either
> house". I haven't found the topic in the archives here, although I did find
> a 2002-2003 thread in alt.usage.english, and it got pretty heated.
> (http://groups.google.com/group/alt.usage.english/browse_thread/thread/cc0d775685b36c58/45c97680c26fcba3?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=congressman#45c97680c26fcba3)
>
> I'll summarize the main viewpoints that emerged in the AUE thread, with the
> intention being that if you subscribe to one of these views, you can know
> that your view is in the record. The question I'm trying to answer comes
> after the summary.
>
> 1.  Since "Congress" refers to both the Senate and House of Representatives
> together, therefore "Congressman" DOES mean "member of either house of
> Congress", although it is usually used to refer just to a representative.
>
> In opposition, we have:
> 2.  Even though "Congress" refers to both the Senate and House of
> Representatives together, you just have to learn the semantic limitation on
> "congressman" as one of the idiosyncratic things about the word, the same
> way that you learn that a humanitarian is not an anthropophage, even though
> vegetarians are herbivores.
>
>
> 2A. Although "congressman" may have at one point included senators, it
> doesn't now. (Basically the Q-based narrowing of "congressman" that Larry
> mentioned in his paper introducing the term.)
>
> 2B. No, "congressman" never did include senators.
>
>
>
> My question is whether claim 2B is true. The OED has 1780 for its earliest
> attestation (see below), before the Constitutional Convention, but I'd like
> to find some attestations between 1789 and the early 1800s to see how
> "congressman" is being used in the early years of the US. It doesn't appear
> in the Constitution or the Federalist Papers. Google Books and ProQuest have
> been of little help, so I was hoping some of the accomplished antedaters
> here might be able to help out.
>
>
>
> OED:
>
> 1780 The American Times iii. 28 Ye coxcomb Congressmen, declaimers keen.
> 1806 FISHER AMES Wks. (1854) I. 349 And I consider too, how unreasonable it
> is to expect a Congressman can fill letter after letter with important
> matter. a1834 DOW Serm. III. 137 (Bartl.), Our congressmen, my dear hearers,
> what are they? Nothing but bloodsuckers upon the cheek of the United States.
> 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.
>
>
>
> Thanks!
>
>
>
> Neal Whitman

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