As a word for "a small, high desk with a slanted top for holding the notes of a lecturer" (both lectern and lecturer are rooted in the Latin word for "read"), lectern may be getting near its last waltz.

That is because two high-powered political lawyers entrusted by their clients with details that are thought to make or break candidacies -- and to whom $600 an hour is considered chicken feed -- backed up by their vast, cumbrous array of counsel and law clerks, have banished the word from the vocabulary of televised debate. Vernon Jordan Jr., Democrat and famous Friend of Bill, and James Baker III, Republican and former secretary of state, negotiated an agreement on behalf of George W. Bush and John Kerry that will be remembered by lexicographers yet unborn for its notorious Section 6(e): "At no time during these debates shall either candidate move from their designated area behind their respective podiums."

Set aside their grammatical disagreement between either and their; both of these eminent attorneys cannot concern themselves with mere pronoun agreement. And stipulate that modern stylists have abandoned the traditional style of spelling the plural of a word ending in um, like podium, with an a; (send your memorandums about stadiums elsewhere).

No; the nit to be picked today has to do with the Jordan-Baker entente illustrated by " behind . . . podiums." That noun, rooted in pod, meaning "foot" (as any podiatrist can tell you), is defined accurately in the second edition of the Encarta Webster's Dictionary (over 2,000 pages, $50), published last week by Bloomsbury and with its U.S. general editor the perceptive Anne H. Soukhanov: "a small raised platform that . . . somebody giving a speech can stand on."

Note the notion of "standing on"; the essence of a podium has long been that it is underfoot. Podia (don't touch that, copy editor; I'm entitled to one nutty idiosyncrasy a week) enable speakers, standing on them, to look out over audiences and be seen as well as heard. In this somewhat iconoclastic judgment, I am in sync with the New York Times stylebook: "a speaker stands on a podium and at or behind a lectern."

Ms. Soukhanov's lexies dutifully note that one sense of podium is synonymous with "lectern," as do roundheeled synonymists at several other leading dictionaries. Lawyers Jordan and Baker, masters of diplomatic ambiguity, can take refuge in such ready acceptance of common usage. But they depart from the Times stylebook at their linguistic peril.

When lectern fully absorbs the meaning of podium, what word will we apply to that necessary step on which all speakers, especially but not only the height-challenged, need to stand? I heard it the other day from a stagehand, when a little guy could not see over the top of a lectern that could not be lowered: "Somebody get him a riser."