The U.S. Congress has been in the news a lot recently, creating bills to spend hundreds of billions of dollars here and hundreds of billions more there.

And I have been thinking about the noun “congressman” as a title.

The U.S. Congress comprises two branches: the Senate, and the House of Representatives.

So technically a “congressman” or “congresswoman” is either a U.S. Senator or a U.S. Representative.

But do not dare called a U.S. Senator by the title “Congressman” or “Congresswoman”; oh, the horror!

No, a U.S. Senator with the surname “Hotair” wants to be called “Senator Hotair”, not “Congressman Hotair” or “Congresswoman Hotair”.

In contrast, a U.S. Representative with the surname “Hotair” typically prefers to be called “Congressman Hotair” or “Congresswoman Hotair”, not “Representative Hotair”.

I suspect that part of this is because the word “congress” often refers to the U.S. legislative branch and not to a state legislative branch, whereas the word “representative” is often used to refer to elected officials in state legislative branches and is much less commonly used to refer to elected officials in the U.S. House of Representatives.

So “congressman” (or “congresswoman”) is more prestigious because it is more often associated with a higher position (the U.S. legislative branch) than is “representative” (applicable to many, but not all, state legislative branches).

But I also believe that “congressman” is more popular than “representative” in modern American English because it is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to say the three-syllable “congressman” than it is to say the five-syllable “representative”.

In contrast, but consistent with my hypothesis, because the five-syllable “representative” is only slightly more complex than the four-syllable “congresswoman”, we tend to hear and see “Representative” almost as often as “Congresswoman” in reference to female members of the U.S. House of Representatives.