‘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.