PHOBIASpec · 284 entries · revised 26 Aug 2026
A reference index of phobias and fears
Every phobia name in one place, defined in plain language and sorted by what the fear is of. Each entry says what stands behind the word: a diagnosis the manuals name, a pattern the research documents, or a coinage that has never left the dictionaries.
The basics
What is a phobia?
A phobia is a fear of a specific object or situation that runs out of proportion to the danger it presents, persists, and costs the person something. DSM-5-TR sets six conditions for a specific phobia: fear out of proportion to the actual risk, an immediate anxiety response on exposure, avoidance or extreme distress, a life-limiting effect, at least six months’ duration, and no other disorder that accounts for it.
- Fear
- Ordinary, proportionate to its object, and useful. Most people who describe a fear of heights or of spiders are describing this, and it is not a diagnosis.
- Phobia
- The same fear held past six months, out of proportion to the risk, and paid for in changed behaviour: a refused lift, an avoided bridge, a flight never booked.
- The suffix, -phobia
- From the Greek phobos, fear. It attaches to any noun, which is why a word ending in it is no evidence that the fear behind it has ever been studied.
Browse phobias by category
Every entry files under one of 13 categories, decided by what the fear centres on: an animal, a place, the body, an object, a number or a word, a social situation, or something the record says is not a fear at all. Each category prints the rule for what belongs in it. The eight largest are below.
- Social & InterpersonalFears whose object is other people: being judged by them, being among them, or being without them.
- The Body, Illness & DeathDeath, dying, disease, contamination, ageing and the body itself.
- Abstract & ExistentialFailure, the future, change, infinity, being forgotten.
- Places & SituationsEnclosed spaces, crowds, bridges, lifts, tunnels and flight.
- Animals & CreaturesThe largest group in the catalogue and the oldest.
- Nature & Natural EnvironmentHeights, deep water, storms, darkness and fire.
- Technology & Modern LifePhones, machines, artificial intelligence, radiation and being unreachable.
- Objects, Figures & PatternsClowns, dolls, masks, holes, mirrors and buttons.
Phobia and fear collections
Every set here is ordered by hand and deliberately incomplete, cutting across the taxonomy rather than filling a slot in it. Each one says what it leaves out and why, and the note beside every entry says what earned it its place.
- Words That Are Not PhobiasPhotophobia, homophobia, xenophobia, chromophobia. Where the suffix does scientific, political or sociological work instead of naming a fear.
- Medical and Dental FearsThe fears whose avoidance is itself the danger. Needles, dentists, doctors, hospitals and scans, and what avoiding each one costs the person avoiding it.
- Most Common PhobiasSpiders, heights, flying, the dentist, public speaking: the phobias most often called common, each with the prevalence figure the claim rests on.
- One Word, Two Different FearsAerophobia, phonophobia, basophobia: terms carrying two unrelated senses, with the collision traced and the usable meaning named.
- Phobias in the DSM-5Animal, natural environment, blood-injection-injury, situational and other: one entry per DSM-5 type, plus the fears the manual filed somewhere else.
- When the Suffix Is an AccusationHomophobia, islamophobia, russophobia and the rest: where each word was coined, who uses it, and why none of them is a phobia in the clinical sense.
- Words Nobody Has Ever UsedPerfectly formed Greek terms with no case, no prevalence and no diagnostic listing. Where each word was found, and what the record behind it actually holds.
- Culture-Bound SyndromesSusto, taijin kyofusho, dhat, sinbyeong and wendigo psychosis: presentations shaped by a setting rather than a separate species of fear.
Common questions
Questions about phobias and fears
The eight put most often to a search box, answered from what the catalogue holds. Every figure below is one an entry carries and links back to it.
What is the difference between a fear and a phobia?
Duration, proportion and cost. A fear of heights that makes somebody hold the rail is ordinary. It becomes a specific phobia when the fear runs out of proportion to the actual danger, produces an immediate anxiety response on exposure, lasts at least six months, and changes what the person does: a stairwell avoided, a job turned down, a flight never booked.
What is the most common phobia?
No survey ranks them against each other, so the honest answer gives figures rather than a winner. Claustrophobia carries a diagnosed prevalence of 3.3 per cent, from Depla, ten Have, van Balkom and de Graaf in 2008. Arachnophobia is described everywhere as one of the commonest anxiety disorders on record, at 3.5 to 6.1 per cent of the world’s population, and that range names no survey, no year and no sample size.
Why do phobia lists contain hundreds of words nobody has studied?
Because the suffix is productive. Any Greek or Latin root plus -phobia produces a word that looks clinical, and a list can be extended indefinitely without a single case behind the additions. Of the 284 terms in this catalogue, 72 are labelled coined: present in dictionaries and word lists, absent from the clinical literature.
Is every word ending in -phobia a phobia?
No. Photophobia is a medical symptom, an abnormal intolerance to light producing discomfort or pain in the eyes, and it is the clearest case in this catalogue of the suffix meaning something other than fear. Homophobia and xenophobia name positions taken towards other people rather than fears held about them.
How long does a fear have to last before it counts as a phobia?
Six months. The threshold exists to let ordinary childhood fear pass rather than to be strict for its own sake: most children who fear thunder or dogs stop, and a diagnosis made at the first sign would catch a stage that almost everybody goes through and leaves.
What is the difference between a phobia and an anxiety disorder?
A specific phobia is one anxiety disorder among several, and the object is what separates it from the rest. Social anxiety disorder attaches to being evaluated by other people, agoraphobia to situations that would be hard to leave, and a specific phobia to one named thing. Every entry here records which diagnostic home it belongs to, and 127 of them belong to none.
Does PHOBIASpec say how a phobia is treated?
No. The entries record what has been studied under a name, including the cases where a single report is the whole literature, and stop at the edge of the record. No entry recommends a treatment, offers a self-test, or hands anybody a verdict about themselves. Treatment is a clinical question and this site does not answer it, for reasons set out on the about page.
Why does PHOBIASpec label entries instead of ranking them?
Because a rank implies arithmetic the sources do not support. Most of these terms have never been counted in a population survey, so a popularity score would be an invented number wearing two decimal places. The four labels describe the record behind a word instead: whether a diagnostic manual names it, whether clinical literature exists under it, whether the evidence is a case report, or whether the word appears only in dictionaries.