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Is there an English word for someone who collects newspapers as a hobby eg. a philatelist collects stamps, a ..... collects newspapers.

Thank you.

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  • Well, maybe there's a name somewhere in this article, but I didn't see one.
    – Hot Licks
    Oct 8, 2018 at 1:45
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    But apparently "journalistic ephemerology" is occasionally used for the practice.
    – Hot Licks
    Oct 8, 2018 at 1:50
  • @HotLicks Does that mean that a collector of journalistic emphemerology would be a journalistic ephemerologist or possibly a journalistic ephemerophile?
    – BoldBen
    Oct 8, 2018 at 5:26

2 Answers 2

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Well!

A philatelist, as you've pointed out, is a person who collects (and studies) stamps.

A numismatist is one who collects (and studies) coins.

A vexillophile collects and displays flags.

The funny thing here is that all such words are of recent coinage (less than a century and a half, in fact, most of them).

The fact that there is currently no word for someone who collects newspapers (or newspaper clippings, for that matter) does not mean we couldn't coin one ourselves, right here and now, using the same principles. All you need, really, is one or two Latin or Greek roots which, by the way, do not have to be exactly right, just close enough (case in point: "philatelist" is composed of two Greek roots, "phil" (love) and "atelia" (exemption from taxes). The fellow who coined it claimed it was as close as he could get, in Koine Greek (or something) to "stamp."

Well, why not diurnophile?

It has a nice Latinate ring to it, does it not?

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ephemerist

someone who collects items of an ephemeral nature such as food labels, postcards, tax discs, newspapers etc.

Ephemera are transitory creations which are not meant to be retained or preserved. Its etymological origins extends to Ancient Greece, with the common definition of the word being: "the minor transient documents of everyday life". Ambiguous in nature, various interpretations of ephemera and related items have been contended, including menus, newspapers, postcards, posters, sheet music, stickers and valentines. […]

In 1751, Samuel Johnson used the term ephemerae in reference to "the papers of the day" – and is frequently cited as the term's creator. This application of ephemera has been cited as the first example of aligning it with transient prints. Ephemeral, by the mid-19th century, began to be used to generically refer to printed items. Ephemera and ephemerality have mutual connotations of "passing time, change, and the philosophically ultimate vision of our own existence".
Source: Wikipedia

Collectors and dealers of transitory items joined together to form two associations: The Emphemera Society (England) was founded in 1975 while its American counterpart the Ephemera Society of America was founded in 1980

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  • As close as one is likely to get. Aug 25, 2023 at 14:54

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