Wedded words

IS there any kind of gall other than unmitigated gall? Have you ever met a hussy who wasn't brazen? Have you ever applied blithering to any noun other than idiot?

Anybody who flatly denies having used those words in pairs is talking arrant nonsense (and the only time we use arrant is with nonsense). These wedded words are faithful to each other: you never hear "unmitigated nonsense'' or "arrant gall," "blithering hussy" or "brazen idiot." The words never stray from their lifetime partners in cliche.

Here is an exception: the verb denies, as used above, has broken up with the adverb flatly and moved in with another suitor. Apparently flatly denies is not mouth-filling enough. Those who deny (or are in denial, to use the hottest psychobabble) want a word partner with a fiercer yet more intellectual connotation.

Senator John Kerry shot down a salacious rumour recently with "I just deny it categorically". Asked about charges that Al Qaida prisoners were being maltreated at our base in Cuba, a spokeswoman for Joint Task Force/Guantanamo replied, "They're categorically false, completely untrue." And in Madrid, asked if he planned to switch football clubs, the English metrosexual soccer star David Beckham said, "I can categorically deny I have had any meetings with Roman Abramovich.''

Farewell, flatly; a more ringing emphasiser has run off with denial. Though angrily, hotly and flatly are used by journalists to characterise the denials of interviewees, deniers themselves choose the modifier made famous by philosophers.

"As used originally by Aristotle," wrote Sir William Hamilton in his 1866 classic on logic, "the term categorical meant merely affirmative and was opposed to negative. By Theophrastus it was employed in the sense of absolute ... opposed to conditional; and in this signification it has continued to be employed by all subsequent logicians."

Aristotle used category to classify 10 predicaments. It was the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant who laid down an unconditional ethic, binding on every reasoning being: "Act as if the maxim from which you act were to become, through your will, a universal law." This became known as his categorical imperative.

"What is a categorical denial as contrasted with a denial?'' ask Tom and Carol Creel in e-mail-land. (If you're going to send a digigram to onlanguage@nytimes.com, please say where you're from.) "We have never heard anyone make an `uncategorical' denial."

That word, not in use, would mean "imprecise, conditional, hypothetical, tentative." The word that has clasped denial to its bosom, snatching it from flatly, is categorical: "direct, unconditional, pertinent, clear." The noun category places subjects in separate folders for easy locating and study; the adjective categorical calls up the sense of orderly, defined classifications, defeating the army of ignorance in detail.

If you want to emphasise your denial without sounding lawyerly or philosophical, try absolutely.

JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA, who recuses himself from Supreme Court cases about 10 times a year, decided - in a 21-page memo - not to disqualify himself from a case about Vice-President (Dick) Cheney's refusal to reveal the names of members of an energy task force. The Sierra Club had charged that because he and Cheney had been guests on a duck-hunting trip, Scalia should not participate in the case. Scalia countered that because the Vice-President had been sued not personally but in his official capacity, much precedent existed for justices to sit in that circumstance.

"Since I do not believe my impartiality can reasonably be questioned," he wrote, "I do not think it would be proper for me to recuse."

But here is the head-scratcher: Why did he not write "recuse myself"? This verb, meaning "to withdraw from judging", is usually transitive, taking an object like "myself". Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote that any suggestion "as to why a justice should recuse himself in a pending case is ill considered".

But a school of thought holds that recuse is intransitive. Judge Ronald Kessler of the King County (Washington) Superior Court sends along this citation: "Strictly speaking," wrote the Court of Appeals of Washington in the 1992 State vs Kron, "to recuse is to challenge the Judge. In response, the Judge may or may not disqualify himself; he does not recuse himself. Recusal is the process that results in the Judge's disqualification."