Aboutabout

Aboutabout is a term used in discussions of meta-language and recursive discourse. It is formed by repeating the word about and is typically used to illustrate self-reference or second-order discussion, rather than as a standard lexical item in ordinary language. In academic and online contexts, aboutabout serves as a toy example to explore how topics refer to their own description.

Etymology and terminology: The coinage is informal and draws on the common English preposition about. The doubling does not indicate a new meaning; instead it signals a self-referential layer of discourse, akin to terms like meta, reflexivity, or recursion. The concept shares affinities with meta-discussion and metafiction, highlighting how a statement or description can concern the description itself.

Usage and examples: In linguistic and logic discussions, aboutabout appears in sentences such as "This statement is aboutabout the description of this page." In wiki and documentation contexts, it might appear in templates or test cases to demonstrate how recursive linking behaves, or as a playful label in discussions about how a topic is described on a page.

See also: meta-discussion, self-reference, recursion, metafiction, linguistic meta-language.