Jerry Seinfeld claims a cookbook author is cooking up some fancy semantics by calling him an actor rather than a comedian to minimise the humour in statements she says defamed her.

Lawyers for Seinfeld say Missy Chase Lapine's lawyers resorted to the switch in words to describe Seinfeld when several weeks ago they filed a rewritten version of her lawsuit against him and his wife in US District Court in Manhattan.

"Jerry Seinfeld is an enormously wealthy and well-known actor," Lapine's revised lawsuit said. The original had called him a comedian.