General knowledge · Words & language

The suffix "-phobia"

From Greek phobos, fear

Etymology — the Greek words for fear

The ending that turns the name of anything into the name of a fear of it, from Greek phobos, meaning fear, panic or rout, and personified by the Greeks as a god who rode into battle with Ares. Medicine uses it strictly, for a handful of recognised anxiety disorders; the rest of the vocabulary is an open list that anyone can add to, which is why the dictionaries contain hundreds of coinages that no patient has ever presented with. Its opposite number is the ending built on philia, love.

How to spot them

▸Greek for fear, personified as a god and a son of Ares
▸The open marketplace gives the fear of leaving home; the summit gives the fear of heights
▸An old name for rabies, from the terror of water it produces
▸The two moons of Mars carry the god's name and his brother's

Key facts

The Greek god of panic and rout, son of Ares and Aphrodite, whose name is the root of the whole family

Phobos; his twin brother is Deimos, terror

The fear of open spaces and crowds, named from the marketplace of a Greek city

Agoraphobia, from agora; in modern psychiatry it covers the fear of situations that are hard to escape from

The fear of enclosed spaces, from the Latin for a bolt or lock

Claustrophobia, from claustrum

The fear of heights, from the Greek for a summit — not to be confused with the fear of flying

Acrophobia, from akron, the same root as acropolis and acrobat

An old name for rabies, taken from the terror of drinking that the disease produces

Hydrophobia

The fear of the number thirteen, spelled out in full Greek numerals

Triskaidekaphobia; the fear of Friday the thirteenth has an even longer name

A joke coinage for the fear of long words, deliberately made almost unpronounceable

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia — an elaboration of the real word sesquipedalian, 'a foot and a half long'

The comic term for the dread of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth

Arachibutyrophobia

Two moons discovered by Asaph Hall in 1877 carry the root and its twin (1877)

Phobos and Deimos, the moons of Mars

Key ideas

Clinically, a phobia is a persistent and excessive fear of a specific object or situation, out of proportion to the actual danger, and sufficient to disrupt ordinary life. Most of the hundreds of dictionary coinages describe dislikes rather than disorders.

Quick-fire facts

•The root is Greek phobos, 'fear, panic, flight'; in Homer, Phobos is the personification who attends Ares in battle
•Phobos and Deimos, the two moons of Mars, were discovered by Asaph Hall in 1877 and named for the god's sons
•DSM-5 recognises three broad categories: specific phobia, social anxiety disorder and agoraphobia
•Specific phobias are conventionally grouped into animal, natural-environment, blood-injection-injury and situational types
•Arachnophobia takes Greek arakhnē, a spider, and hence the class Arachnida
•Hydrophobia was long used as the name of rabies itself, because of the spasms the disease causes on swallowing
•Photophobia in medicine means painful sensitivity to light, not a fear of it
•Xenophobia, homophobia and Anglophobia use the ending for hostility rather than fear
•The opposite ending, from Greek philia, gives Anglophile, bibliophile and Francophile
•Triskaidekaphobia is built on treiskaideka, thirteen; the fear of Friday the thirteenth is paraskevidekatriaphobia

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Sources

C. T. Onions — The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology
American Psychiatric Association — Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition