‘What about poetaster, then?’ asked my husband accusingly, looking up from his whisky and the Spectator, in which I’d ruminated on gloomster.
He expects me to know the origins of all words, and blames me for their irregularities.
I’d long suffered an itch from poetaster. It’s not that I thought it pronounced poe-taster, but that I’d presumed the -aster element was from Greek aster, a star. It’s not. Why should a star make a poet a bad poet?
Now that I’ve looked it up, I know that -aster is a classical Latin suffix expressing incomplete resemblance. This suffix has no relation to the English -ster suffix, as in gloomster or spinster.
The most familiar English noun ending in -aster is cotoneaster.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in