A cow is a female bovine; a bull is a male cow; is that like a bum steer? (Wood On Words).

ABC's Wilma Mathews, ABC, was paging through the August '02 issue of Bottom Line/Tomorrow when the following hed paused her:

"How to stay afloat in this foundering market."

Her note postmarked Phoenix inquired, "Shouldn't this heading read 'floundering'?"

Inasmuch as the article below did not predict Armageddon, but instead proffered advice on what to do to survive, our colleague's observation is a good one. Here is the Usage Note printed in The American Heritage Dictionary (4th ed.) at founder:

"The verbs founder and flounder are often confused. Founder comes from a Latin word meaning 'bottom' (as in foundation) and originally referred to knocking enemies down; it is now also used to mean 'to fail utterly, collapse.' Flounder means 'to move clumsily, thrash about,' and hence 'to proceed in confusion.' If John is foundering in Chemistry 1, he had better drop the course; if he is floundering, he may yet pull through."

* Now that fall semester is under way, a pop quiz ought not be an unreasonable challenge. The following paragraph was culled and kept from a Wall Street Journal feature published late in the last millennium:

"The price of some working ranches includes the cattle. A cow is a female, milk-producing bovine; a bull is a male cow, ox or buffalo; and a steer is a castrated male raised for beef."

Your task: isolate and identify the oxymoron. (Answer at end of column.)

* PR Week for July 15 just past carried the news from New York that "Transatlantic independent agency Brown Lloyd James (BLJ) has lured Mike Hohzman, the 2002 PR Week Awards PR Professional of the Year, away from global giant Weber Shandwick Worldwide.

"And," continued staff writer Jonah Bloom, "in a double whammy, BLJ has also hired John Gans...." Perhaps due to faith poorly placed, or possibly ignorance, the Word Squad in NY waved double whammy right through the check-out lane and out into the general populace.

Now maybe Bloom perceives a whammy as a good thing and a double whammy as a times-two goody, I don't know. But he shoulda looked it up, because the new Microsoft Encarta College Dictionary says at whammy "n (informal) 1 a jinx or hex 2 something with unpleasant or damaging consequences [Mid-20C. <?]." Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed.) shows "n a supernatural power bringing bad luck...." Other available lexica concur; those that display Bloom's double whammy are in consonance with the meaning shown in Random House Webster's College Dict. (updated annually) "n. informal a combination of two factors producing a potent negative impact."

Try to do the right thing; this will amaze and gratify your readers, who, after all, are cosignatories of your paycheck.

* Last June the Boston Globe's London bureau chief, Charles M. Sennott, led his story on the queen's golden jubilee with "Why in God's name do they want so much to save their queen?". A friend of mine in the music business read the piece and called to say how the lede evoked in him Louis Armstrong's response to the person who'd asked for his definition of jazz: "Man, if you gotta ask, you'll never know."

That said, he questioned Sennott's second graf, which described the nonarch's arrival "in a gold-gilded carriage..." Best to bag that bullion; AHD4reminds the wanderer that gilded means covered with or as if with a thin layer of gold. My checking on gild paid another dividend, the new slang noun gimme cap: "A cloth cap with a bill, adorned with the name of an organization or a product logo: 'one-size-fits-all gimme caps' (Charles Leerhsen)."

* Pop Quiz II: What's the total of Roman numerals D and L? (See below.)

Pop Quiz Answers: What a perfect venue in which to display oxymoron, which, as most readers will recall, is defined as "a combination of contradictory or incongruous words (as cruel kindness)..." (Merriam-Webster's 10th Collegiate Dict.). "Male cow" indeed; make it male bovine. The pop fave, jumbo shrimp, is sometimes paired with military intelligence. Pop Quiz II shows Roman numbers designating 500 (D) and 50 (L) for a total of.. right!

Alden Wood, APR, lecturer on editorial procedures at Simmons College, Boston, writes and lectures on language usage. He is a retired insurance industry vice president of advertising and public relations, His e-dress is [e-mail].