philately的词源

英文词源

philately

philately: [19] When a Monsieur Herpin, a French stamp-collector, was looking for an impressive and learned-sounding term for his hobby, he was hampered by the fact that the Greeks and Romans did not have postage stamps, and therefore there was no classical term for them. So he decided to go back a stage beyond stamps, to the days of franking with a post-mark. In France, such letters were stamped franc de port ‘carriage-free’, and the nearest he could get to this in Greek was atelés ‘free of charge’, a compound formed from a- ‘not’ and télos ‘payment’.

Using the Greek prefix phil- ‘loving, love of’ (as in philosophy and a wide range of other English words) he created philatélie, which made its first appearance in English in 1865.

philately (n.)

"stamp-collecting," 1865, from French philatélie, coined by French stamp collector Georges Herpin (in "Le Collectionneur de Timbres-poste," Nov. 15, 1864), from Greek phil- "loving" (see philo-) + ateleia "exemption from tax," the closest word Herpin could find in ancient Greek to the concept of "postage stamp" (from a- "without" + telos "tax;" see toll (n.)). A reminder of the original function of postage stamps, now often forgotten: the cost of letter-carrying formerly was paid by the recipient; stamps indicated it had been pre-paid by the sender, thus the letters were "carriage-free."

It is a pity that for one of the most popular scientific pursuits one of the least popularly intelligible names should have been found. [Fowler]

Stampomania (1865) also was tried. Stamp-collecting is from 1862. Related: Philatelic; philatelism; philatelist.

中文词源

philately：集邮

来自法语philatelie,该词为根据希腊语创造出来的一个词，来自phil-,爱，ateleia,免税，免税凭证，来自a-,无，没有，telos,税收，词源同toll,收费，后来用该希腊词来借词邮票，代替邮费的凭证。

该词的英语词源请访问趣词词源英文版：philately 词源，philately 含义。