Kalleh suggested a thread on phobias to complement our thread on manias. So, to get started:

Amathophobia--Fear of dust (uhh...don't come to my house if you suffer from this!)

Chrematophobia--Fear of money (yeah...right!)

Eosophobia--Fear of dawn (Dracula? )

Kenophobia--Fear of empty spaces (I did NOT make this one up!)

Phronemophobia--Fear of thinking (Maybe this is my son's problem?)

Soceraphobia--Fear of parents-in-law ('Nuff said!)

fear of englishmen‹

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anglophilia

fear of englishmen‹

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Anglophilia is the admiration of England...not the fear. Anglophobia may be the fear of Englishmen though.

I know a certain Englishman i would rather have a philia about, rather than a phobia of!

I reckon you could take almost any Greek noun and append -phobia: someone, somewhere, is bound to be scared of it!

Triskadekaphobia: Fear of the number thirteen;
Paraskavedekatriaphobia: Fear of Friday the 13th.
Parthenophobia: Fear of virgins (!)
Primeisodophobia: Fear of losing one's virginity;
Ergophobia or Ponophobia: Fear of work;
Ephebiphobia: Fear of teenagers;
Phobophobia: Fear of fear (duh);
Pentheraphobia: Fear of your mother-in-law;
Dentophobia: Fear of dentists;
Cyberphobia: Fear of computers or working on computers;
Stasibasiphobia Fear of standing up and walking (I couldn't find a fear of chewing gum);
Hellenologophobia: Fear of long Greek words like this one.

That word makes me wonder what a doctor says when he discovers that someone is suffering from this condition.

"I've found out what's wrong, Mr Smith. You're suffering from hellenologophobia."
"Mr Smith? Please come down from the top of the closet."

or perhaps:

"I've found out what's wrong, Mr Smith. I can't tell you what it is, though."
"Why not?"
"Its name would only make you worse."
"Argh! I'm going to die, aren't I? Otherwise you'd tell me."
"Now, now, Mr Smith. There's no need to get thanatophobic about it..."
"Mr Smith? Please come down from the top of the closet."

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...There's no need to get thanatophobic about it..."

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Thantophobia--Fear of death or dying


And from another thread:

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Asa, whose hair blew away, leaving more room for the important cranial tissue

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Do these help explain why, Asa?

Trichophobia--Fear of hair

Phalacrophobia--Fear of becoming bald

(Not to worry, Asa...I loves ya anyway! [big kissssssssss-e]

Well, gee, Arnie, thanks! You took my 2 favorites!
paraskavedekatriaphobia and parthenophobia

Here are some other fun ones:
kakorrhaphiophobia - fear of failure
rhytiphobia - fear of wrinkles (a fear of many women!)
koimetrophobia - fear of cemetaries
cacohydrophobia - fear of sewer water (I had to include that, considering our cacography thread!)
calligyniaphobia - fear of beautiful women (especially those who are callipygous (?!!)

And what's the one phobia-word that's in fact not a mental condition but rather a physical condition (and thus in that sense, the word is a caconym)?

fear of babies.@

i KNOW this is weird. but that new little animated movie Lilo and Stitch? i am horrified by the creature. Stitch. when he opens up his mouth and it plays Hounddog. i had a nightmare about him and when i see him on a billboard it gives me a cringe feeling.

not as horrible as how i felt about cruella de ville when i was little, but close. you know, snow white was hitler's favorite film. ¿

A few more good 'uns:

Walloonphobia: Fear of the Walloons (Huh?)
Samhainophobia: Fear of Halloween
Pteronophobia: Fear of being tickled by feathers
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia: Fear of long words
Didaskaleinophobia: Fear of going to school
Bogyphobia: Fear of bogies or the bogeyman
Arachibutyrophobia: Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth.

you just made those up just now!

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Bogyphobia: Fear of bogies or the bogeyman

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I'm not quite sure what the bogeyman is, though.

Round here, it would be Boogyphobia. The fear of the boogie man or of nose pickers?

The bogeyman is an imaginary monster used to frighten children. There are several spellings in use -- boogieman is another variant. Bogies are evil or mischievous spirits. Again, there are several variants: boogie, booger, bogle, etc.

Bogey is also one over par in golf, a particular arrangement of wheels in a tank or a train, an unidentified flying aircraft, dried mucus, a policeman and Humphrey Bogart.

On that note....is there a word for a fear of bosses...or better yet, of being late for work? No, it's not a fear of being late, it's a fear of being caught when you get there late!

(whistling as I leave..."hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go.......")

OK, here goes. I can't find anything, so we'll just have to coin them.

Fear of the boss = anaxtiophobia.

Fear of being caught when late = halopsiophobia.

Apologies to Greeks everywhere for my mangling of their language.

[big kiss] Arnie, I knew I could count on you!

gamophobia - Fear of marriage.
anuptaphobia - Fear of staying single.
coitophobia - [self-explanatory]

hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia - fear of long words.

PS: Yep, arnie, it looks as if you and I googled up the same source. Take a look at that last one: does the second double-p seem like an error? Does it really have two P?

[pun intended ]

OK, so it's bad form to answer my own question. Forgive me, please!

Q: "And what's the one phobia-word that's in fact not a mental condition but rather a physical condition (and thus in that sense, the word is a caconym)?"

A: hydrophobia = rabies. But it also means "fear of water".

More A: I find that it's not the "one phobia-word" like this. Another is photophobia which, in the same way, means both "abnormal sensitivity, of the eyes, to light" and also "fear of light". Also, a plant is "photophobic" if it grows best in the absence of light.

Sesquipedalophobia is a much more sensible word for the fear of long words. The Sesquipedal part literally means "a foot and a half long". The Roman poet Horace wrote in Ars Poetica (The Art of Poetry): Proicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba, "He throws aside his paint pots and his words that are a foot and a half long".

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, I'd guess, was invented as a joke. Someone thought that we ought to have a really long word for this phobia and coined a word that means "fear of a monstrous hippopotamus of a word, one a foot and a half long". As mentioned, the double p in the middle is an error, since sesquipedal itself only has one. Unless the coiner thought the word wasn't quite long enough...

[This message was edited by arnie on Wed Aug 14th, 2002 at 4:13.]

"Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, I'd guess, was invented as a joke."

So we've agreed that we floccinaucinihilipate that word?

From Dr. Dictionary:
Q. What does "floccinaucinihilipilification" mean?
A. It means "the estimation of something as worthless."

It was obviously coined by someone with the same mindset as the inventors of floccinaucinihilipilification.

The origins of this word are quite interesting. Eton College, a famous English public (that is, private) school used a Latin grammar that included these words for "of little or no value":

• flocci: derived from floccus, literally a tuft of wool and the source of English words like flocculate, but figuratively in Latin meaning "something trivial";
• pili: the plural of pilus, a hair, which we have inherited in words like "depilatory", but which in Latin could mean a whit, jot, trifle or something insignificant;
• nihil: nothing, as in words like "nihilism" and "annihilate";
• nauci: means "worthless".

The originator of the "word" then stuck -fication on the end to make a noun.

[This message was edited by arnie on Wed Aug 14th, 2002 at 6:41.]

From a column in today's local newspaper, concerning "relationships":

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There seems to be no shortage of commitment-phobic men.

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There really ought to be a word for something so familiar, but I can't find one. Perhaps the ladies should have first shot at coining a suitable term?

richardgereophobiaK

i would like to know why a letter or symbol appears at the end of every one of my posts. i'm not doing it.

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i would like to know why a letter or symbol appears at the end of every one of my posts. i'm not doing it.

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I thought it was a signature! Something for our unique wild.

wildflowerchild, I am looking into it for you.

Phalacrophobia--Fear of becoming bald

(Not to worry, Asa...I loves ya anyway!
____________________________________

"I'm happy to know you're not phallophobic, Asa said, stiffly."

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"I'm happy to know you're not phallophobic, Asa said, stiffly."

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Other things, I do not have:

Aphenphosmphobia--Fear of being touched.

Arrhenphobia--Fear of men.

Heterophobia--Fear of the opposite sex.

Medorthophobia--Fear of an erect penis.

Oneirogmophobia--Fear of wet dreams.

Philemaphobia--Fear of kissing.


(Ummm...to name a few )

what have we here? arnie, you got your ears on?¨ ∞

Interesting pair of meanings for ergasiophobia:
1. fear of or aversion to work.
2. a surgeon's fear of operating in spite of demonstrable need.

How did we miss this last Friday?
Paraskavedekatriaphobia: Fear of Friday the 13th.
It was originally posted by...none other than ARNIE!

Then, akin to our
Akimbo thread, here is: thixophobia - The fear of touching or being touched

On another board where I'm a member someone started a thread and named it Triskadekaphobia. I pointed out that was simply fear of the number 13, and the word she really wanted was Paraskavedekatriaphobia.

As it happens, I office on the 13th floor of a downtown building.

It used to be quite common for tall building to skip "13" in the numbering of their floors, going directly from 12 to 14. Though I haven't though about it, it strikes me that I rarely see skipping like that nowadays. Are others often enough in tall buildings to comment on whether this is common?

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Originally posted by shufitz:
As it happens, I office on the 13th floor of a downtown building.

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Office? When did "office" become a verb?

Tinman

Good one, Tinman! Did we finally catch Shufitz in a mistake?

Now for arnie.... He will be hard, what with his
Triskadekaphobias and his Paraskavedekatriaphobias!
(Am I going to get into trouble with the apostrophe boards with the placement of my apostrophes????) [edited with the apostophes removed]

[This message was edited by Kalleh on Tue Sep 17th, 2002 at 7:39.]

Are we verbing nouns or nouning verbs now? And I leave for a day or two and Schufitz made a mistake! Oh Dear! What is this board coming to?

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Triskadekaphobia's and his Paraskavedekatriaphobia's!
(Am I going to get into trouble with the apostrophe boards with the placement of my apostrophes????)

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Aarrgh!

No apostrophes there, please!

Ok..this is strange! At least on my screen, looking at the times, I posted after Arnie, yet my posts appear before his. And this has happened twice in the last five minutes!

Morgan, that happened to me last night in the rainbow thread. I thought we must have been posting at the same time.

Okay, arnie, I have edited the post. As soon as I posted, I realized I was probably wrong, thus the parenthetical comment. Is there ever a time that using plural dictates the use of apostrophes? I thought so, but I cannot remember the rule.

One of these days, arnie, just wait, I will catch you in an error..... I thought I had you with 3 sheets to the wind, but, lo and behold, you were right. According to my source, most people think the sheets mean sails, but you didn't even make that mistake!

There is quite a lot of argument about this. About the only occasion when it is permissible IMO to use "'s" to indicate a plural is when you are using numbers or single letters. For example: "Mind your P's and Q's" or "He counted to one hundred in 10's." Many people feel that even this limited use is abhorrent.

Some people think it is OK to use it when using acronyms or initials, such as "CD's", "TV's", and so on. I disagee.

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most people think the sheets mean sails

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I knew that sailing holiday on the Norfolk Broads when I was 13 would come in handy!

In other words, when using apostrophes, be a minimalist?

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I knew that sailing holiday on the Norfolk Broads when I was 13 would come in handy!

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Yes, damn!

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In other words, when using apostrophes, be a minimalist?

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Well, there are two main uses for the apostrophe. They should be used then, but not sprayed around. The two uses are to show possession: "This is John's car", "That house is the Jones'"; and to indicate that a letter or letters have been left out: "It's my car" (for "it is my car" or "I can't drive" (for I can not drive". The Apostrophe Protection Society has the rules set out clearly on their home page.

I do appreciate that bit of information because I realize that I use them far too much in my writing. I agree with you that they are sprayed around. In fact, until this discussion, I thought that I was a minimalist when using apostrophes, as compared to others. Thanks!

This has been discussed at great length on the FOTA board and the usual bugbear is the apostrophe's possible use in the plurals of acronyms and single-letter words.

The consensus seems to be that it is in order to use an apostrophe for plurals where its omission would allow confusion. For example, the phrase, "...this is about U's..." needs the apostrophe to show that it is the plural of U that we are speaking of. Without the apostrophe the word could be the pronoun or the country.

To be fair, though, there are few such occasions and the use of apostophes in normal plural should be eschewed.

Richard English

I have been at a conference this week with internationally renowned speakers. Now that I am more attuned to apostrophes, I notice that in the powerpoint presentations, every single presenter uses apostrophes with acronyms. For example, today they were discussing "DRG's"(sic).

Common, but usually incorrect and permissable only when needed to avoid ambiguity as in my "U's; US; u's; us" example.

Richard English

the correct usage of apostrophe's is whenever you happen to feel the need to contr'ct a word such as "I ain't never goin' to try that ag'in" th's belies the common usage of aphostrophe's which is as a possesive of the subject noun. this should n'v'r be done in polite society. for example, the common usage would be to say "that's jim's ferrari" when the correct usage would be to say, "that ferrari is used by jim but belongs to the bank" I hope this clears the matt'r up

Oh Oh! The Apostrophe Board people are going to get you!

WOW, buckeye, you've got apostrophes up the uh... umm... colon.