To be a collector of language is an innocent occupation.  The snatchers and hoarders of birds' eggs and of flowers first create a scarcity, then hunt down the rarities (or, even worse, hire others to go marauding for them) and finally exterminate the beauty which they crave...To hunt words is to do no trespass.

--Ivor Brown
from A Word in Your Ear,
a book in which he also termed
the English vocabulary
"the El Dorado of collectors"