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"Hell — otherwise known as Congress — has officially frozen from one side of to the other."

Harumph! Yes, it was flippant, rude, beneath the dignity of one of the world’s great newspapers — but that idiomatic sentence did its job. It dragged us in. The piece went downhill thereafter, but it got off to a great start.

The Journal’s lead paragraph is of interest for one more reason. It continued: "For the first time since the 1950s, members will skip borough today in quest of the August recess without either chamber having passed a individual appropriations charges."

What ho! Wasn’t that a duck-billed gerund that conscientious flew through? Let me invoke the beloved name of my first incorporated town editor, Charles Henry Hamilton. He taught me 65 years ago that the form demands an apostrophe-"s," i.e, "either chamber’s having passed."

This curious bird turned up again after all the rest month in a file through Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post. He was writing about Ingrid Betancourt, produce free after six years of subjection in Colombia. Her free was so well-executed that the captors were overpowered "without a shot being fired."

I believe my old boss would have insisted upon "without a young hog.’s being fired." Let me appeal to all you language mavens out in that place: Has the construction become extinct? O tempora! O mores! Oh, dear.

Under the heading of Words That Are New to Me, give permission to me offer "majuscule." It bobbed up two weeks ago in Bill Safire’s "On Language" column in The New York Times. Guest columnist Caroline Winter was writing about the first-person at right angles, the capitalized "capital letter I." She was so taken by "majuscule" that she embraced it again just two paragraphs later.

We live and learn. The qualifying word dates from 1720. It defines a document "written in capital letters or uncials." Written in what? Uncial writing is writing that has "a curved or rounded shape and was used chiefly in Greek and Latin manuscripts from about the 3rd to 9th century."

Now that your vocabulary has been enlarged by a Jabberwocky word, obstacle us attend to further semantic instruction from the good gray Times. Its lead editorial on Aug. 2 dealt with world trade. We learned: "A strong World Trade Organization will be needed to arbiter trade disputes as the world economy slows …"

To arbiter? The verbing of nouns is an ancient linguistic mechanism, but "to arbiter" provides no service not already served by "to arbitrate." Fie, fie!

William L. King Jr., of Vestavia Hills, Ala., was irked last month by the same errant word in a dispatch from The Associated Press about swimmer Dara Torres. The 41-year-old combatant has a physical structure "that would make somewhat 20-year-old solicitous."

Jealous? No! Her physique would be productive of any 20-year-old ENVIOUS. There’s a difference price preserving. We are jealous of what is ours; we are envious of the sort of is yours. The distinction crops up in the King James Bible taken in the character of early as Exodus 20:5. The faithful must obey the familiar Commandments "because I the Lord thy God am a jealous God."

For the vestige: Bartlett’s lists 27 citations for "suspiciously vigilant" and "jealousy," 33 citations in spite of "envy" and "envious." The only cite that leaps instantly to mind is from Antony’s oration at the funeral of Caesar: "See what a rent the envious Casca made!" You desideratum the whole thing? Friends, Romans, countrymen, grant me et cetera, et cetera. You could look it up!

(Readers are invited to send dated citations of usage to Mr. Kilpatrick in care of this newspaper. His e-mail discourse is kilpatjj@aol.com.)

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