Philately is the hobby of collecting postage stamps — and often the paper that goes with them, like old envelopes, postmarks, and first-day covers — for pleasure, not to use them on letters. A person who does this is a philatelist. In ordinary talk almost everyone just says stamp collecting; philately is the more formal, slightly technical name you meet in club titles, catalogues, and serious writing about the hobby. It is not a stuffy activity only for experts: children collect too, but the long word tends to show up when the collecting is organised and studied. The name itself is a reminder of what a stamp was for, which people now often forget. Long ago, the person who received a letter paid for the journey. A stamp meant the sender had already paid, so the letter arrived without that charge. The word was coined in French in the 1860s (philatélie) by a collector, Georges Herpin, from Greek ‘I love’ plus a Greek word for ‘not having to pay a tax’ — the nearest old word he could find for that prepaid stamp.

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