List of Phobias
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Psychological conditions
§ Agoraphobia, Agoraphobia without History of Panic Disorder – fear of places or events where escape is impossible or when help is unavailable.
§ Aquaphobia – fear of water. Distinct from Hydrophobia, a scientific property that makes chemicals averse to interaction with water, as well as an archaic name for rabies.
§ Disposophobia, better known as "compulsive hoarding" – the fear of getting rid of or losing things.
§ Dysmorphophobia, or body dysmorphic disorder – a phobic obsession with a real or imaginary body defect.
§ Hoplophobia – fear of weapons, specifically firearms (Generally a political term but the clinical phobia is also documented).
§ Neophobia, Cainophobia, Cainotophobia, Cenophobia, Centophobia, Kainolophobia, Kainophobia – fear of newness, novelty.
§ Paraskavedekatriaphobia, Paraskevidekatriaphobia, Friggatriskaidekaphobia – fear of Friday the 13th.
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Animal phobias
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Non-psychological conditions
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Biology, chemistry
Biologists use a number of -phobia/-phobic terms to describe predispositions by plants and animals against certain conditions. For antonyms, see here.
§ Photophobia (biology) a negative phototaxis or phototropism response, or a tendency to stay out of the light
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Prejudices and discrimination
The suffix -phobia is used to coin terms that denote a particular anti-ethnic or anti-demographic sentiment, such as Americanophobia,Europhobia, Francophobia, Hispanophobia, and Indophobia. Often a synonym with the prefix "anti-" already exists (e.g., Polonophobia vs.anti-Polonism). Anti-religious sentiments are expressed in terms such as Christianophobia and Islamophobia. Sometimes the terms themselves could even be considered racist, such as with "Negrophobia."
Other prejudices include:
Jocular and fictional phobias
§ Aibohphobia – a joke term for the fear of palindromes, which is a palindrome itself. The term is a piece of computer humor entered into the 1981 The Devil's DP Dictionary[4]
§ Anatidaephobia – fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you (Derived from the word Anatidae, which is the family contain ducks, and the suffix -phobia). Comes from Gary Larson's The Far Side.[5]
§ Anoraknophobia – a portmanteau of "anorak" and "arachnophobia". Used in the Wallace and Gromit comic book Anoraknophobia. Also the title of an album by Marillion.
§ Arachibutyrophobia – fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth. The word is used by Charles M. Schulz in a 1982 installment of his "Peanuts" comic strip[6] and by Peter O'Donnell in his 1985 Modesty Blaise adventure novel Dead Man's Handle.[7]
§ Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia – fear of long words.[8] Hippopoto- "big" due to its allusion to the Greek-derived word hippopotamus(though this is derived as hippo- "horse" compounded with potam-os "river", so originally meaning "river horse"; according to the Oxford English, "hippopotamine" has been construed as large since 1847, so this coinage is reasonable); -monstr- is from Latin words meaning "monstrous", -o- is a noun-compounding vowel; -sesquipedali- comes from "sesquipedalian" meaning a long word (literally "a foot and a half long" in Latin), -o- is a noun-compounding vowel, and -phobia means "fear". Note: This was mentioned on the first episode of BrainiacSeries Five as one of Tickle's Teasers.
§ Keanuphobia - fear of Keanu Reeves, portrayed in the Dean Koontz book, False Memory, where a woman has an irrational fear of Keanu Reeves and has to see her psychiatrist, Mark Ahriman, each week. He calls her the "Keanuphobe" in his head. She eventually ends up killing her psychiatrist because she believes that he is one of the Machine agents trying to control her.
§ Luposlipaphobia - fear of being pursued by timber wolves around a kitchen table while wearing socks on a newly waxed floor, also fromGary Larson's The Far Side.
§ Nihilophobia - fear of nothingness (comes from the combination of the Latin word nihil which means nothing, none, and the suffix -phobia), as described by the Doctor in the Star Trek: Voyager episode Night. Voyager's morale officer and chef Neelix suffers from this condition, having panic attacks while the ship was traversing a dark expanse of space known as the Void. It is also the title of a 2008 album byNeuronium. Also, the animated version of George of the Jungle (2007 TV series) is seen suffering in one episode of the cartoon, where they are telling scary stories.
§ Venustraphobia – fear of beautiful women, according to a 1998 humorous article published by BBC News.[1] The word is a portmanteau of "Venus trap" and "phobia". Venustraphobia is the title of a 2006 album by Casbah Club.
Miscellaneous
§ Choreophobia – hatred of dance, a book by Anthony Shay about Iranian dance and its prohibition after the Iranian Revolution