Collectors

Oxford Dictionaries Online’s word of the day earlier this week was phillumenist, a collector of matchboxes. The phil part of the word is from the Greek prefix philo, denoting a liking for, and lumen is Latin for light.

 

Other interesting specialist terms for collectors include: deltiologist (postcards, from the Greek for ‘writing tablet’), tegestologist (beer mats, from the Latin teges, mat or covering), exonumist (badges, tokens and medals), scripophile (old bond and share certificates) and notaphilist (bank notes). Despite the Latin and Greek connections, these words were all coined only in the 20th century.

 

Other collectors, who are not in the OED, include: arctophile (teddy bears, from the ancient Greek for bear), meadophile (beer bottles) and fromologist (cheese labels).

 

By far the largest group of collectors in the OED are those who collect taxes (not as a hobby, presumably). Here are some old words with that meaning:

gabeller: gabelle was a salt-tax imposed in France before the Revolution. The equivalent English word was salt-master.
galer: gale was duty on fish in Gloucestershire
mise-gatherer: a mise was a tribute paid to secure a liberty or immunity, especially in Wales and Chester
penny-grave: formerly in the East Riding of Yorkshire
poll-groat bailiff: a poll-groat was an extortionate tax
publican: Ancient Roman times
remembrancer: a collector of the Crown’s debts
tithe-proctor: a collector of tithes
uplifter: a collector of rents, in Scotland

There are also words for this job in various parts of the old British empire: amildar and aumil (South Asia), zemindar and zilladar (India).

Comments

[Jemmy Hope]

Mazumdar, a fairly common Indian surname, originally meant a tax inspector, or perhaps assessor.
Where my mother's family lived as a child a rent collector was known as a whoremonger; incorrect usage, of course.

[Virtual Linguist]

Thanks, Jemmy. You're a fount of knowledge!