Like “-mancy” or “-logy”, another English suffix that indicates something important about a set of words is “-aster”. That suffix is from Latin, and indicates “lower status” or “incompleteness”. In Latin it was used pejoratively. The English words that end in “-aster” have passed out of everyday usage, but a century or more ago they were widely used by experts in a field — or at least those who considered themselves experts — to describe others whose skill, scholarship, or academic credentials were not up to snuff.
An expert astrologer, for example, might describe a lesser rival as an “astrologaster” (even though both were practicing “astromancy”; divination via stars). A second-rate grammarian would have been a “gramamiticaster”. Any number of fields employed “-aster” words to characterize anybody outside the inner circle, from politics (“politicaster”) to philosophy (“philosopaster”) to science in general (“scientaster”).
Unfortunately today there really aren’t any “-aster” words left to remind people what they mean. Although it might be tempting to call someone a “opiniaster” if they hold on to an opinion a bit too long, or a “witticaster” if they keep trying and failing to say something witty, it’s more likely that nobody would understand what you were talking about. But at least they wouldn’t think to accuse you of being a “usageaster”.
One interesting “-aster” word is “militaster” — that’s someone who tries to talk a good game about combat and the military, but really doesn’t have the knowledge or experience to know what they’re talking about. But what they are talking about — fighting, war, conflict and the like — has plenty to talk about. You’ll notice another common suffix among these words: “-machy”, which comes from the Greek word “mache” (fight). For example, a fight (or contest) among poets is called “poetomachia”, and their melee might also be “logomachy”; a contest about words. If one of the poets brings a flame thrower, though, that would become “pyromachy” (the use of fire in a battle).
“Monomachy” is single combat, such as a duel. Joining together and fighting a common enemy is “symmachy”. Possibly the weirdest “-machy” word is “batrachomyomachy”. That’s a war between… wait for it… frogs and mice. The word came about during the translation of a satirical poem from its original Latin — it was probably written by Homer. He would have been the one to bet on in any poetomachia you happened to attend in the Roman Coliseum.
