In the example usage given for todays's word (royal we, 15 July), surely our Mick is using "we" inclusively, to mean everyone in his immediate location (including himself), rather than referring to himself alone (the royal usage). A better example might have been Margaret Thatcher's "We have become a grandmother..." (http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=107590).

Best, Mike

Exactly, Mike, You beat me to it by 35 minutes and 1 second!!

Pete

We are not impressed. How this particular usage could have been misused perplexes us.

It looks to me more like the nurse's we, as in "How are we this morning?" asked while the patient is coming out of a drug-induced sleep, not having quite recovered from the anesthetic of the major operation.

‘In the absence of the accused we will continue with the trial.’.. He used the royal ‘we’, but he spoke for us all.
- John Rae, The Custard Boys

I suddenly retreated 46 years to my days as editor of my high school paper, in which I had written the following headline for page one of the the first issue: "Homecoming couple reigns supreme!" When I read Gaynor Flynn's comments about the Rolling Stones from The Sun Herald ("Sir Mick leads the way, a smirk on those impossibly exaggerated lips. 'How are we all?' he asks. It's appropriate he uses the royal we -- after all, they've reigned supreme for almost half a century.") I could hear my journalism adviser's tongue clicking: "Jerr, Jerr -- if they 'reign' then they ARE 'supreme' -- you don't need BOTH words!"

the nurse's we

Some languages distinguish between an inclusive we and an exclusive we, depending on whether second person is part of the we or not (link on clusivity).

A funny take on the royal we is in the movie "Blazing Saddles." Gene Wilder (Jim The Waco Kid) has just awoken in jail and is being addressed by Cleavon Little (Sherrif Bart), who is black:

SHERRIF BART: Are we awake?
JIM THE WACO KID: We're not sure. Are we black?
SHERRIF BART: Yes we are.
JIM THE WACO KID: Then we're awake, but we're very puzzled.

Like it Alex, and it reminds me:

The Dude: We dropped off the damn money...
The Big Lebowski: We?
The Dude: I! The Royal "we"! You know, the editorial...

Best, Mike

And we will weep
To be so alone
We are lost!
We can never go home

From Gollums song.

Your journalism adviser didn't understand much about the workings of the English language, did he?



The nurse's we is a whole nother kind of we; it excludes the first person.

I had a question about the royal we. Long ago in school, I remember being taught that when a monarch used the royal we, he was referring to "himself and god," speaking for both, as part of his whole "divine right to rule" deal. Later, in discussing it with linguistically-excited friends, I heard a different explanation: the royal we means "the monarch and the country as a whole," since, as the country's leader, he's speaking for everyone. What do you think or know or feel about this? Who exactly is the "we" meant to be, specifically in the instance when a monarch is using it?

That would be the Preciousian We...

here is wikipedia's take, fwiw (not much, as it has both explanations marked [citation needed]).

-joe [situation wanted] friday

Or either it's just the same impulse that drove us to the singular 'you', which originally was used to people higher in social status to the speaker. How far back can we trace the royal we in English?

once upon a time I waited tables, and a customer (who was alone) said something like, "we would like blah, blah..." I replied, "oh, is that the royal we?", and he said, "no, I just took that."

heh

'We þæt ellenweorc estum miclum,
feohtan fremedon, frecne geneðdon
eafoð uncuþes..'

-joe (if you consider Beowulf to be English) friday

Nosism: The use of 'we' in referring to oneself – would it also be called nosism if using 'we' to refer to someone else (other than oneself)?
The Dean of our College always addresses me thusly, "How we doin'?" (instead of the standard "How are you doing?"). I don't think he intends it as a corporate inquiry (i.e. keeping a pulse on the College and student life at large) but rather just a friendly personal greeting directly to me (he's a farm boy from Oklahoma so maybe it's a colloquialism).
Is referring to oneself in the third person also a form of nosism? For example, there was a whole episode of Seinfeld in which George Costanza begins referring to himself in the third person ("George is getting upset!") after picking up on the conversation patterns of another character who does the same ("Jimmy likes you!" says Jimmy to Elaine who has mistaken another guy who she likes as Jimmy not realizing that the guy addressing her is using the third person.)

That would be the nurse's we.

There's also the "Mommy We"--a speech artifact that did not impress my daughter, even as a preschooler. To my "We're going to pick up our toys now," she responded, "But the 'I' of 'we' doesn't want to!"

Smart kid.
Unfortunately the nurse's we and the Mommy we are too often closely related.

[taking a short hop along the time line]

The Internet and electronic communications technologies make it possible to communicate in obscurity, so in many instances it is impossible to ascertain whether a speaker is using we as nosism. No one would take advantage of that obscurity to inflate one's number, I hope.

If you use the Royal we on the internet you have to divide the number of your posts by at least 2 and it takes forever to become a Pooh-Bah.