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THE LANGUAGE OF STAMPS |
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No one can appreciate thoroughly with full romance of a subject without knowing something of the origin of its common terms and philately there is much to interest the word detective. The world philately itself although not much more than 123 years old, for it was formed in 1863, really goes right back to the ancient Greeks word philos and ateles free of tax. Free of tax means the same as prepaid. So that the two Greek words joined together have given us our modern term for stamp collecting. The word stamp comes from the old Angli-Saxon stempan and originally had the meaning of to tread heavily and then by degrees came to mean to press heavily, to make an impression and then to mean the impression itself. To collect is to gather together from the Latin col together and legere gather, while the album in which the collection is placed is really the white thing. The Romans had blank tablets for recording facts and as these tablets were white they were called albi. So black books for storing pictures and stamps were called albums. Another philatelic word which comes from Greek is catalogue, which is simply the Greek katelegein or thing chosen and written down. Adhesive is from the Latin ad meaning to and haerer meaning to stick. Not all words are so easy to trace as these. The name of the useful articles which we use for handling stamps provides us with a puzzle. Tweezers is perhaps traceable to the obsolete word tweeze, which was used for a surgeons case of instruments and on the other hand it may have some connection with the Anglo-Saxon word twisel which meant a kind of fork. Centuries ago the Romans had a word mineo which meant to project. From this they made a word mons, which meant a mountain. This passed into Anglo-Saxon a munt, meaning anything raised above the surroundings. By a stroke of fancy, anything prominent for exhibition purposes was called mounted, and the thing upon which it was placed was called a mount. The Latin forare meaning to bore through has given us our word perforation. This is very simple, but what about the gauge with which we measure perforations?. It comes from an old French word and that it may be connected with jale a bowl, gallon a gallon, or jalon a measuring stake. Duplicate is pure Latin, duc – two and plicare – to fold and so is obliterate which is ob – over and litera – a letter. The curse of all collecting, the forgery, has the most romantic story of all. One of the oldest languages in the world is Sanscrit , which developed in the continent of Asia. The speakers of Sanscript had a root word BHU, which had a meaning of to be, to exist, to produce or to make. When the Romans appeared the adapted this root word and twisted it about until they coined a word fui, which meant to be in the future. From this they made their verb facio, meaning I make and the man who did the making, that it the worker was a faber. From faber we get such words as fabric and fabricate, but we also get forge. The old French for a maker was a forge, which was a corruption of faber and this passed into the English language. It is strange that now the word is either used in connection with making objects of iron, or else in connection with making imitations of something better. The stamps and covers we all collect are fascinating in themselves. Each have histories which can keep students busy and happy for years but the words we use too are just as absorbing and have stories to tell themselves. |
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