Word To Use Today: realia.

In these times of home-schooling many of us are having to get the hang of a lot of technical stuff.

Luckily, though, even the most techno-phobic of us can turn to realia to enhance our learning.

So...what are realia, exactly?

Realia (you say it reeAYleea) are real objects, especially those used in teaching. Realia is one of those rare English plural words which has no singular form, so although two frogs are realia, one frog isn't. I suppose it would be an example of realia, though,

Librarians use the word to describe those irritating three-dimensional objects for which they're obliged to find a home, like a box of Shakespeare's dandruff, for instance, or Cervantes' bath hat, or Petrarch's first attempt at knitting, that sort of thing.

Sad to say, someone has now invented virtual realia. These are on-screen objects you can turn round as if they're in 3D.

I'm sure they're very interesting, but just typing virtual realia makes my head hurt.

Word To Use Today: realia. This word comes from America and was first known in 1894. It comes, obviously, from the word real. That word comes from the Old French réel, from the Latin rēs, which means thing.

Although there is no official singular form of this word (as far as I can discover) the word memorabilia has a rare singular form memorabile (MEMoraBILLee) so a singular form reale (reeAYllee) would at least be consistent, though admittedly a nuisance as far as pronunciation is concerned.