My Love of Words

If there is one thing I love, it is words: I love their sounds, their meanings, their double and triple meanings, and their etymology, which is just a classy way of saying “their derivation!” But I have discovered the word that describes me: logophile, from the Greek logos meaning “speech”, and the ending – phile meaning friend or lover. I don’t know that I’d go quite as far as to claim “epeolatry”, the worship of words, first coined by American Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1860. Literarian? … an educated or lettered person? … maybe. I hope I usually give an opinion only on things I know about, rather than be accused of ultracrepidarianism! And yes, I love books, am therefore a bibliophile, but not necessarily book-bosomed, because I don’t carry a book at all times. Am I a bibliobibuli? Mary would need to answer whether I read too much. Reading a few books at a time, as I sometimes do, would render me a bibliophagist! But I’m sure I am not the only one who is bibliosmiac – surely there is something special about the smell of a book …

… but back to words …

Dear Steve (a prominent classicist)

Only seven more sleeps before Marjie and I head off to England. Trouble is, there’s about fourteen sleeps worth of “stuff” to do before we go!!!

One bit of “stuff” I’ve had on my list was to follow up the meaning of “taphology” which, you opined, SHOULD mean “the study of tombs.” Well, my 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, doesn’t agree! Indeed, it doesn’t even rate a mention!! Nor does it appear in my Webster’s, nor in the on-line versions of Collins, Cambridge and Oxford dictionaries!!!




HOWEVER, … a Google search on the word reveals that, in the contexts in which it appears, it means things like, “a love of cemeteries”, “the study of gravestones”, “the study of tombstones”, “cemetery art”, “epitaphs”, “gravestone art”, and uses words like “history”, “grave-markers”, and “sepulchral”.

Over a wine or two, I had a chat with a learned and erudite fellow who works at the Australian Council for Educational Research. He agreed that “taphology” SHOULD be an acceptable word! He suggested “epigraphy”, which turns out to be the study of inscriptions, but not exclusively on tombs. He subsequently emailed me with the following:

“While looking up taphology on the internet I found this on a dictionary site: "sindology” the study of funeral shrouds." It sounded odd. When I looked this up in the OED I found no mention of it, but then I noticed sindonology, which is specifically a study of the Holy Shroud, not shrouds in general.

Which goes to show that not everything on the internet is true, and some things are wrong in two ways at once.”


I also looked up Chapter 21 of the legislation of the mighty state of Louisiana in the good ol’ US of A. One of the responsibilities of the Division of Archaeology in the Office of Cultural Development in the Department of Culture Recreation and Tourism, (which is in the bailiwick of the Lieutenant Governor by the way!!!) … now where was I … Oh yes: in Chapter 21-B known as the "Louisiana Historic Cemetery Preservation Act,” clause 932 gives the legislative declaration of intent, a paragraph which concludes with this:

“The importance of cemeteries should not be taken lightly, as these significant elements represent a substantial tourist attraction for the state of Louisiana, and also present an endless source of data for historians, pathologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and genealogists that collectively lead us to a better understanding of our own culture.”

So, if the Americans can use it, why shouldn’t we???