Government, n: the executive policy-making body of a country or state. Executive, n: the branch of government responsible for carrying out laws, decrees, etc.

There isn't much to choose between them. And for those who thought the Scottish Executive was a form of briefcase, the £100,000 transformation into the Scottish Government, announced last weekend, was intended both to avoid confusion and help address its inferiority complex. Of course, it has succeeded instead in stirring up a row.

The idea that this was a Nationalist coup - not tanks in the streets so much as a new stationery order - doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. The first attempt to use the g-word goes back to Henry McLeish's time, when his Parliament Minister Tom McCabe dared to suggest that the term "executive" doesn't mean much to the average Scot. An unnamed Westminster MP was reported responding that MSPs "could call themselves the White Heather Club, but they will never be a government".

As First Minister, Jack McConnell peppered his public pronouncements with reference to the "Scottish government", and it ceased to be a big deal.

That was until last weekend. While Labour at Holyrood accepted it, Prime Minister Gordon Brown responded that he intends to stick with "Scottish Executive", and the Scotland Office later clarified that Whitehall will continue to use the term, as the administration is a creature of statute and "Executive" is what the Scotland Act says.

This was deemed to be a snub to the First Minister, who retorted that he may now address the Prime Minister by his official title of First Lord of the Treasury. He was referring to one of the odder anomalies of Britain's unwritten constitution: that you will struggle to find any legal basis for the Prime Minister's powers other than the statute that lets him use Chequers as a country pad.

Alex Salmond's response could have been humour, or it could have been a declaration of verbal war, depending on which newspaper you read. Significantly, most of the conflict reportage on this has been in London-based papers, where the debate has raged less in political circles than between their Scottish and headquarters editors. The Times, Telegraph and Mail are refusing to use the "g"-word, another snub that roused Team Salmond to a frenzy of indifference.

Then yesterday, sensing that calm might be returning to this storm-tossed teacup, SNP MP Pete Wishart threw in his tuppence worth. He has written to Scotland Secretary Des Browne to register his incredulity at the government's "petulant defiance" - a reminder of how the SNP can be both dignified in power in Edinburgh while nipping the UK government's heels at Westminster. There is a serious issue here for the SNP administration, in that it cannot push this too far. Fights about symbolism are to be picked carefully. A Nationalist back bencher's recent plea to have the Saltire flutter atop Edinburgh Castle was deemed unhelpful by a leadership that wishes to be seen governing (or "executing"?). Labour's leader-elect Wendy Alexander was quick to use its ridiculing potential.

The row that has not yet broken is over the replacement of the administration's coat of arms with the St Andrew's cross, symbolically replacing delegated royal powers with Scottish people's sovereignty.

That is a whole new can of constitutional worms, and risks what journalists call "a furious backlash" from heraldic pedants.