Philip Bump, “Scott Brown Wants Us to Discuss Whether or Not He Was a Lobbyist. So We Did.” (Washington Post, The Fix, Sept. 8, 2014)
We asked Ben Zimmer, executive producer of Vocabulary.com and language columnist for the Wall Street Journal, for his assessment of how the word is understood. “It’s an interesting case where Congress trying to legislate language and the meaning of words,” Zimmer said, adding that “the meaning of words are very slippery things.” From the beginning of its usage, there has “always been a general understanding that the role of a lobbyist is to influence legislators.” Its application to Brown is “kind of a gray area, obviously,” with Zimmer arguing that simply working for the firm not necessarily implying that Brown is doing lobbying.
(Incidentally, the term itself does not originate from men waiting in the lobby of a hotel for President Grant, as legend has it. “There’s plenty of evidence that the term predates the Civil War,” Zimmer notes, pointing to research conducted by OED contributor Barry Popik. The first mention of “lobby” in the sense we mean dates to 1814 — in Albany, N.Y., not Washington.)
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