Stay back! I'm lexicon-tagious!

Neuphemism™ round-up:

• There is now such thing as an "intellectual valet." Definition: "Tall and attractive" 25-year-old, attached-at-the-hip New Jersey gubernatorial aide "reassigned" after questions surface regarding pre-crash SUV seating arrangements. Used in a sentence: "Officer, this isn't what it looks like, she's just my intellectual valet, porting my excess cognitive attaché..."

• If it comes to it, Bill Clinton wants to forgo the staid and formal "First Gentleman" for the sprightly and puckish "First Laddie."

• And, last but by no measure least, Katie Couric throws sputum-tantrums, first-class phlegm freak-outs, nuclear mucus-meltdowns!

The stress has caused her to blow up at her staff for small infractions on the set. During the tuberculosis story in June, Couric got angry with news editor Jerry Cipriano for using a word she detested -- "sputum" -- and the staff grew tense when she began slapping him "over and over and over again" on the arm, according to a source familiar with the scene. It had seemed like a joke at first, but it quickly became clear that she wasn't kidding.

"I sort of slapped him around," Couric admits. "I got mad at him and said, 'You can't do this to me. You have to tell me when you're going to use a word like that.' I was aggravated, there's no question about that." But she says she has a good relationship with Cipriano. "We did ban the word sputum from all future broadcasts. It became kind of a joke."

Not to single out Katie for being a saliva prima donna or anything. There are all sorts of bulbous, rank, grotesque words out there that elicit visceral manifestations of "blegh." One of my editors has it with "moist." I have it with all variations of the phrase "putting out feelers."

But really, does it surprise anyone that Katie is a sputum diva?