Word.ws English Dictionary

illeisms

illeisms is the plural of illeism.

Meaning of illeism

Noun

illeism (countable and uncountable, plural illeisms)

  1. (often) The practice of (excessively) referring to oneself in the third person.
    • […] "[I]lleism with a difference" occurs when a character, speaking in the first person, refers to himself by name (not simply by a pronoun, which is illeism proper). [William] Sh[akespeare] makes significant use of the device in only four "middle plays." […] This sort of illeism enriches the...2002, Lewis Walker, comp., “General Works (Items 0067–1154)”, in Shakespeare and the Classical Tradition: An Annotated Bibliography 1961–1991, New York, N.Y.; London: Routledge, →ISBN, page 300

Questions about illeisms

What is illeisms the plural of?
Illeisms is the plural of illeism.

Words near illeisms in the dictionary

  1. illegitimize
  2. illegitimized
  3. illegitimizes
  4. illegitimizing
  5. illeism
  6. illeisms
  7. illeist
  8. illeists
  9. illeity
  10. iller
  11. illest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: illeisms (page history and authors); illeism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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