Editorial On The Word "Philately"

This is truly an SCF milestone moment.

Although this doesn't have anything much to do with philately, I came upon this card (I've posted it before) with some other "weird" names for these collecting disciplines:

Call it whatever you want I'm still a stamp collector and proud of it!

So much for philately. I posted on my church bulletin board that I was looking for fellow philatelists and the next week you should have seen the looks I got! Don't know where their minds were but had to let them know it was STAMP COLLECTING. Still get some odd looks.

Sounds like your church needs some Greek classes. Our parish offers Latin, Greek and Hebrew classes each winter.

Of course, since it's an artificial Greek word, even someone with knowledge of Greek probably wouldn't be able to figure it out.

So, yeah, I bit.

I Googled commatologist. Which led me to macrophily.

I can't help but now wonder, if Gramps were to say he was a commatologist, back in his day, people might have thought he was an editor, in charge of commas.

If he was to say, later in life, after WW II, in the 50', he was a macrophillist, he might have gotten even stranger looks than you did, swrdo. Might even have been ostracized, which is another word in itself.

I won't even touch schragiodogist, much less try to pronounce it, and, I feel safe in saying on his behalf, I doubt Gramps would, either.

It says macrophily is more for the study of the design, detail, and style, and not the whys and wheretofores, So what's the word if you ARE interested in more than the aesthetics? That lead me back to philately?

And yes, I agree, Asimov was there before any us. Except maybe Verne.