[word] philately 集邮philately\fuh-LAT-uh-lee\(noun)
: the collection and study of postage and imprinted stamps
: stamp collecting


Example sentence:
Mark's been interested in philately since he was a kid,
so he was thrilled to learn that a huge postage stamp exhibition
was coming to town.


Did you know?

Who wouldn't love something tax free?
George Herpin did.

He was a French stamp fancier back in the 1860s, when stamps
were a fairly new invention.
Before stamps, the recipient of
a letter -- not the sender -- had to pay the postage.
Stamps
forced the sender to foot the bill, and created a lot of stamp
lovers among folks on the receiving end of the mail -- and a
mania for stamp collecting.
Timbromania was toyed with as a
term to affix to this new hobby -- from the French word for
stamp, timbre.
But when Herpin suggested philatelie
(anglicized to philately), combining the Greek root phil-,
meaning loving, with Greek ateleia, meaning tax-exemption,
stamp lovers everywhere took a fancy to it and the name stuck.