Word of the Week: Illeism
Created | Updated Mar 1, 2010
In the dim dark recesses of h2g2 history before we moved lock, stock and barrel to our new BBC home there used to be a front page feature The h2g2 Word of the Day. It was a way to highlight some of the lesser occurring or largely obscurer words in the English language. Sadly this feature was discontinued.
Until now...
Bel rather kindly emailed Demon Drawer after last edition featuring an old archive Word of the Week column of his in the Post. She also asked in the editorial if he would like to take up his dictionary and scan it for oddities and get back to presenting it as a regular. This is his reply and an example of this week's word.
Word for the Week
Illeism
n. the act of referring to oneself in the third person.
Having done a search of H2G2 Demon Drawer was surprised that there does not appear to be any example in the archives of the word illeism occurring in the past, though he suspects there are several illeists amongst the researchers.
It surely must be a word that Demon Drawer and other researchers and wordsmiths should want to resurrect. One of the first and most famous examples of illeism is Julius Ceasar in his writings on the Gallic War. At the moment parliamentary candidates up and down the UK are probably practicing illeiism on a regular basis. Writing press releases, campaign literature and electoral communications. Demon Drawer is aware of this phenomenon under one of his other hats.
From the Archive
Seeing as last post saw Bel trawling the archives this week's word from the word of the day/week archive seems appropriate:
Reliquary
n. a room used for the storage of relics.
This word does appear in the back catalogue of H2G2 in the edited entry on The Monastery of Alcobaça, Portugal which was published on 17 June 2004.
How can you contribute?
- Go and check out words in the archive to
avoid duplication. - Check out the discussion threads and nominate a word that you feel was overlooked before discontinuation.
- Suggest a new word or your forgotten word in the word of the week archive conversation.
