Toxophilus

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Someone who is a keen lover of archery and the skill of shooting with a bow
2. A person passionately devoted to the sport of archery and the use of the bow
3. An admirer of the bow and arrow who takes great delight in the practice of archery

Etymology: "Toxophilus" is the title of a 1545 book by Roger Ascham, the Cambridge scholar and later tutor to Princess Elizabeth, who wrote it as a dialogue defending archery as a manly, useful pursuit. The title joins the Greek "toxon," meaning bow (and by extension arrow), with "philos," meaning loving or friendly, so the word means something like "bow-lover." Ascham's book was an early English treatise on the subject, and its title gave the word a second life as a name for the devoted archer himself. Because it was coined by an English author from Greek elements rather than inherited from classical usage, the Greeks themselves never used it. The "-philus" ending follows the same pattern as "bibliophile" or "Anglophile," which is why the word sounds like a learned coinage: it was built deliberately, using the old Greek vocabulary that Renaissance scholars prized.

Synonyms: toxophilite, archer