Numbers, Words & Symbols · 9 entries
Number, Word and Symbol Phobias
The number thirteen, the number four, 666, long words, palindromes and mathematics. This group has an unconditional claim on any trigger that is a number, a date, a word or a symbol, whatever belief sits behind it, which is what keeps Friday the thirteenth here rather than under spirits and religion. The rule is deliberately blunt, because sorting by the belief instead would put the same superstition in three different places depending on who was asked.
It is also the group with the thinnest record on the site: not one of these terms is named in DSM-5-TR or ICD-11, and several exist only as words. The fear of long words is the standing joke of the subject and repays reading anyway: sesquipedalophobia is the form recognised in formal and clinical writing, given four words by the 2008 encyclopedia of phobias, and the long version extends it with ad hoc pieces of Latin. Triskaidekaphobia is the opposite case: an ancient superstition whose word is barely older than the web.
In this category
All 9 number, word and symbol phobias
9 entries
- ArithmomaniaEuropean folklore gave vampires a compulsion to count scattered seeds, which is the condition described centuries before anyone named it.
- Fear of Friday the 13thThe 17 to 21 million figure traces to one Asheville organisation. Two airlines report no drop in travel, and Dutch insurers log fewer accidents on the day.
- Fear of Long WordsThe famous name for the fear of long words is a fifteen-syllable joke. The clinical form is sesquipedalophobia, and it has no cases behind it either.
- Fear of NumbersTrouble holding certain jobs, trouble paying bills, trouble managing a budget. This is a fear whose damage arrives as administration, not drama.
- Fear of PalindromesThe word is a palindrome, built by reversing its own suffix. Two sources give two origins four years apart and neither names the person who did it.
- Fear of the Number 13Isador Coriat had the word in print by 1910. No manual carries it and no survey counts it, so the evidence is a habit of numbering: floors, decks, plates.
- Fear of the Number 17Rearrange XVII, the Roman numeral for seventeen, and it spells VIXI, I have lived, which is to say I am dead. The Romans may have noticed first.
- Fear of the Number 4Four sounds like death in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, and not in Vietnamese, which has no such superstition. It removes floors, ship numbers and aircraft registrations.
- Fear of the Number 666Papyrus 115, the oldest surviving text of Revelation 13, gives the number as 616. Two spellings of Nero's name produce the two numbers, which explains both.
Keep going
The other categories
- 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.
Common questions
Questions about number, word and symbol phobias
Is fear of the number 13 a real phobia?
Triskaidekaphobia names a superstition rather than a diagnosis, and no manual carries it. The pattern is worth noticing on its own: the belief is ancient and the word is barely older than the web, which is the reverse of what a reader would expect from a term that looks classical.
What is the longest phobia name?
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, for the fear of long words, which is a joke about itself. Sesquipedalophobia is the form recognised in formal and clinical writing, and the 2008 encyclopedia of phobias gives it four words. The long version extends that with ad hoc pieces of Latin for monster and for hippopotamus.
Why is fear of Friday the 13th filed under numbers rather than superstition?
Because the filing rule here is the trigger, not the belief attached to it. Paraskevidekatriaphobia is set off by a date, so it files with numbers and symbols. Sorting by belief instead would scatter the same superstition across three categories depending on which source was consulted.
What is the fear of the number 666 called?
Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia, and it is filed here rather than with religion for the same reason. Tetraphobia, the avoidance of the number four, is the more consequential one: some Hong Kong apartment buildings skip the entire forties, so the floor above the thirty-ninth is the fiftieth, and a building whose top floor is numbered one hundred could have eighty storeys.