There’s Nothing to Fear (except the Bogeyman)
by
Howard Richler
Four
score years ago minus one, Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared, “We
have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” Well, it appears
Roosevelt was wrong. The site
phobialist.com
lists over 500 phobias that might plague
someone. Some of these phobias aren’t widespread, such as
cherophobia, “the fear of gaiety,” leukophobia, “the fear of
the colour white,” geniophobia, “the fear of chins” and
genuphobia, “the fear of knees.” Moreover, one suspects that
with a fear like arachibutyrophobia, “the fear that peanut butter
will adhere to the root of your mouth,” and
hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, “the fear of long words”
there is more neology at play than psychology.
Years
ago I was convinced that my wheaten terrier suffered from
automatonophobia because he once barked at a scarecrow. The
aforementioned list defines this condition as “the fear of
ventriloquist dummies, wax statues, anything that falsely represents
a sentient being.” I was made aware of this condition thanks to an
article I had just read in Time
magazine in 2001 about phobias. This article also highlighted a
woman who wore rubber-soled shoes when opening a refrigerator and
in the event of a light bulb not functioning would wait hours for
someone to change it for her. Nor could she shop for clothes lest
static on garments impel her to run screaming from a shop. Also
swimming at night was out of the question, lest underwater lights
electrocute her. This woman suffered from electrophobia, “the
morbid fear of electricity”
; phobialist.com
lists it before eleutherophobia,
“fear of freedom,” and after eisoptrophobia, “the fearing of
mirrors, or seeing oneself in a mirror.”
Fears
may have a flip side. If you possess uranophobia you’re afraid of
heaven– hadephobia, your aversion is hell. Calignephobia denotes a
fear of beautiful women and cacophobia, a fear of ugliness. If you’re
afraid of all your relatives, you have syngenesophobia. If you’re
afraid of your mother-in-law, you have pentheraphobia; if both your
in-laws terrify you, your condition is called soceraphobia and if
stepdad terrifies you, vitricophobia is your bane. Medomalacuphobia
is the fear of losing an erection, medorthophobia is the fear of an
erect penis while ithyphallophobia, is the fear of seeing, thinking
about, or having an erect penis. Who knew?
Many of
the phobias listed are recorded in the OED
including aerophobia, “fear of drafts,” bogyphobia, “fear of
bogeymen,” coprophobia, “fear of feces,” deipnophobia, “fear
of dining, siderodromophobia, “ fear of rail travel,”
tæniiphobia, “fear of tapeworm” and triskaidekaphobia, “fear
of the number 13.” If you suffer from papaphobia, the
OED relates that you possess a “distempered
dread of the pope or popery.”
Xenophobia is the fear of
foreign people. One can, not suprisingly given the plethora of
phobias, specify which particular group freaks you out. Some examples
are Anglo-(English), Bolshe (Bolsheviks), Franco or Gallo
(French), Judeo (Jews), Sino (Chinese), Teuto or Germano (German) and
Waloon (Waloons), French-speaking people living in southern Belgium).
However, if you are afflicted with Hellenologophobia, you are not
afraid of Greeks, but of Greek terms or complicated scientific
terminology. On September 26, 2012, after Canadian diplomats at the
United Nations walked out when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave a speech, the
Iranian leader accused Canada of “Iranophobia.” This coinage,
however, has not yet been approved by the OED.
Seemingly any animal can
make someone cringe: bird (ornithophobia), cat (ailurophobia),
chicken (alektorophobia), fish (ichthyophobia), frogs (ranidaphobia),
horse (equinophobia), mice(musophobia), otter
(lutraphobia), shellfish (ostraconophobia), snakes (ophidiophobia),
spiders (arachnophobia), toad (bufonophobia), and wasp
(spheksophobia).
The
word and suffix phobia comes from the Greek phobos,
“fear.” Phobos was the son of the Greek god of war Ares. When he
accompanied Dad into battle, Phobos had the affect of instilling
fear in all whom he encountered. The first citation of “phobia”
in the OED is in 1786:
“I shall begin by defining Phobia..to be a fear of an imaginary
evil, or an undue fear of a real one.” Samuel Coleridge is credited
with the next citation in a letter he wrote in 1801 in which he
employed a facetious usage ; “I have a perfect phobia of inns and
coffee-houses.”
Roosevelt
was right about one thing. We must fear fear itself. This is listed
as phobophobia– the fear of fear itself.
Howard's
next book How Happy Became Homosexual and
other mysterious semantic shifts will be
published in April by Ronsdale Press of Vancouver, B.C.
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