governor-statehouse-1.JPG Don't do what the Wall Street Journal did recently and what countless other publications have done previously. The Wall Street Journal headline read, "Republicans May Lose Grip on Statehouses," but the article was talking about governorships, not legislatures.
While this use of "statehouse" certainly isn't on par with the travesty that is "incent," it is just plain wrong. I checked four dictionaries and all of them said something like this:
"A building in which a state legislature holds sessions; a state capitol."
Governors were never mentioned.
As a strong proponent of replacing "goodbye" with "peace out," I've never been averse to new definitions of words. My mother always said that a good dictionary is descriptive, rather than prescriptive--that communication only improves through the evolution of language.
The real problem is that using the same word for the most prominent building in two branches of state government inevitably causes confusion. This is the state government equivalent of having the same word for "cat" and "dog." From that Wall Street Journal headline, it's impossible to tell whether they are talking about legislatures or governorships.
Even if you disagree, consider it as a resolution. Giving up a word is a lot easier than dropping ten pounds.
