It is well-documented that the term "folklore" was coined in 1846 by the Englishman William Thoms. He fabricated it for use in an article published in the August 22, 1846 issue of The Athenaeum.[21] Thoms consciously replaced the contemporary terminology of "popular antiquities" or "popular literature" with this new word. Folklore was to emphasize the study of a specific subset of the population: the rural, mostly illiterate peasantry.[22] In his published call for help in documenting antiquities, Thoms was echoing scholars from across the European continent to collect artifacts of older, mostly oral cultural traditions still flourishing among the rural populace.