While phobias can be serious challenges for affected people and their psychiatrists, most of us toss the extension onto almost any word and run with it. Schoolophobia is what you have at the end of vacation. Dogophobia is what you have if you've been bitten by a dog. Is phobophobia what you have when you fear being labeled as fearful? Here are some real phobias. Can you identify the meanings?
1. anglophobia: (a) adherence or attachment to English customs or ideas; (b) fear of being in buildings with corners; (c) a person who is averse to or dislikes England and things English; (d) an abnormal and persistent fear of white inhabitants of the United States of non-Hispanic descent.
2. hydrophobia: (a) fear of multiheaded snakes; (b) rabies, an acute virus disease of the nervous system of mammals that is caused by a rhabdovirus; (c) fear of swimming; (d) fear of lifeguards.
3. triskaidekaphobia: (a) fear of the number 13; (b) fear of hair; (c) an unusual fear of things appearing in units of three; (d) fear of whole-wheat crackers.
4. ailurophobia : (a) fear of cats; (b) to give physical or emotional pain, discomfort, or trouble to; (c) a lazy stupid person; (d) fear of people lying in wait especially for an evil purpose.
5. alektorophobia : (a) fear of luck and especially of bad luck; (b) fear of chickens; (c) fear of riding in an electric car; (d) aphasia marked by loss of ability to read.
6. anuptaphobia: (a) fear of staying single; (b) fear of marriage; (c) a morbid fear of amphibians; (d) fear of nuptalian creatures (creatures that move about at night).
7. ophthalmophobia: (a) an aversion to eye exams; (b) fear of snakes; (c) fear of being stared at; (d) the quality or state of being mentally obtuse.
8. onomatophobia: (a) fear of hearing a certain word or of names; (b) a meaningless word coined by a psychotic; (c) apprehension caused by the naming of a thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it (as buzz, hiss); (d) a persistent fear of mathematics.
9. neophobia: (a) a former liberal espousing political conservatism; (b) an absorbing or pervasive dislike of infants; (c) fear of anything new; (d) how Agent Smith feels about "the One."
10. verbophobia: (a) one who stresses words above substance or reality; (b) impaired by wordiness; (c) continual repetition of stereotyped phrases (as in some forms of mental illness); (d) fear of words.
Click here to see how well you know your phobias!
