By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Bill Clinton is a relic of another age,'' the essayist
Lance Morrow wrote in Time magazine, ''like the 20's
party boy F. Scott Fitzgerald stranded in the landscape
of the Great Depression.''

I rise today to our immediate past president's linguistic
defense. Let me tell you about the very articulate. They
are different from you and me. The Lexicographic
Irregulars, asked in this space to choose the phrases
that Bill Clinton would be remembered by, responded with
words that evoke an era of intense controversy and
vituperation. Respondents included his critics and his
speechwriters, those nostalgic for the time of prosperity
and peace as well as for the days of whine and nosiness.

The most memorable Clintonym (a coinage of F. Gwynplaine
MacIntyre) chosen by a plurality of entries was a
sentence that thrilled every semanticist, grammarian and
syntactician in the nation: ''It depends on what the
meaning of the word 'is' is.''

The words that raised parsing to a fine art were spoken
under oath to a grand jury. They were about a statement
made by the president's lawyer during a deposition about
the relationship with a White House intern, in which the
lawyer asserted, ''There is absolutely no sex of any
kind.'' Clinton pointed out that because his attorney had
been speaking only in the present tense, the statement
was true: ''It depends on what the meaning of the word
'is' is,'' he explained, adding, ''Actually, in the
present tense, that is a true statement.'' That is
indisputable: during the deposition, no sex of any kind
was taking place between them.

What made the sentence so memorable? Part was the
exquisite nature of the literal reading, taken by Clinton
critics to be an infuriating example of legalistic
slipperiness. Another part was the unique juxtaposition
of the quoted is with the unquoted is. The sentence would
not have had the same puissance -- indeed, it might not
be destined for the next edition of Bartlett's Familiar
Quotations -- had it concluded with ''the meaning of 'is'
was.''

I feel your pain, an expression of compassion often
associated with psychiatric jargon, was the runner-up in
this sample (which has an accuracy estimated at plus or
minus 60 points). The remark was ad-libbed at a March 26,
1992, campaign rally as part of a riposte to an AIDS
activist who angrily accused the candidate of avoiding
the issue. The candidate, who later became a champion of
gay rights, came back with: ''I feel your pain, I feel
your pain, but if you want to attack me personally . . .
go support somebody else for president.'' He ameliorated
that with, ''I know you're hurting, but you won't stop
hurting by trying to hurt other people.''

Tied for second place, thanks to its repetition thousands
of times on television, is his statement of Jan. 26,
1998: ''I did not have sexual relations with that woman,
Miss Lewinsky.'' What made it memorable was not only its
unequivocal tone but also its accompaniment by a wagging
finger. More than the words, the stern digit fixes it
firmly in the national memory.

A charge leveled by Hillary Rodham Clinton at her
husband's nattering, battering cottage industry of
vilifiers makes it into the political lexicon. On Jan.
27, 1998, during the month that the most memorable
Clinton locutions were launched, the first lady told a
television interviewer, Matt Lauer of the ''Today Show,''
that she and her husband were targets of ''a vast,
right-wing conspiracy.'' (That is most frequently written
without a comma between the adjective vast and the
compound adjective right-wing; such an error is not
attributable to Mrs. Clinton but to the vast right wing.)

''I didn't inhale,'' which was widely quoted in derision
early in the Clinton era, seems to be on the decline in
quoted recollection. Regarding the use of drugs, Governor
Clinton of Arkansas said in 1992 that ''when I was in
England I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and
I didn't like it. I didn't inhale it and never tried it
again.'' (The phrasal verb experimented with became the
operative term in such admissions, giving the action an
almost scientific connotation, rather than ''smoked'' or
''used.'') It was the careful plea of guilty with an
explanation -- of smoking but not inhaling -- that struck
many as ludicrously clever, but the phrase was overtaken
by '''is' is.''

Clinton enthusiasts are proud of ''The era of big
government is over,'' spoken in his 1996 State of the
Union address, a stunning statement from a Democrat,
somewhat tempered by ''but we cannot go back to the time
when our citizens were left to fend for themselves.''
This was described by his public-opinion aide, Richard
Morris, as triangulation, the positioning of a politician
above two contending ideologies, a geometric updating of
''stealing the opposition's clothes.''

Another Clintonism that those who remember his
administration fondly like to recall is the campaign
semislogan, ''It's the economy, stupid.'' This was a sign
posted by his campaign manager, James Carville, and not a
statement by the candidate. Clinton did say in his stump
speeches, ''My responsibility is to grow this economy,''
which was effective though it drew the ire of grammatical
purists who objected to the use of the intransitive verb
to grow in a transitive form.

Students of regional dialect recall with fondness
Clinton's use of Ozark expressions. The most memorable of
these was spoken at a Feb. 15, 1992, rally where the
Arkansas governor said that he hoped people would see him
''working hard, reaching out to them and fighting until
the last dog dies.'' (As 'til the last dog is hung, this
has been traced to a 1902 novel set in Michigan.) Clinton
also contributed this proverb to the political lexicon:
''Even a blind hog can find an acorn.''

Perhaps the most poignant of the memorable Clintonyms was
recalled by Uzi Amit-Kohn of Jerusalem. In a farewell to
Yitzhak Rabin on Nov. 5, 1995, after the Israeli leader's
assassination, Clinton said, ''Shalom, chaver,'' which
translates from the Hebrew as ''Goodbye, friend'' or
''Peace, friend.''

These statements are hardly the relics of a forgotten
age. But as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his notebook,
''There are no second acts in American lives.'' And
''show me a hero, and I will write you a tragedy.'' And
in ''The Great Gatsby,'' his unforgettable, ''So we beat
on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly
into the past.''