Collection · 12 entries
One Word, Two Different Fears
A phobia term can carry two meanings that have nothing to do with each other, and the phobia lists print whichever one they found first. Aerophobia meant dread of a draught for two centuries before it meant fear of flying. Phonophobia is a fear of one's own voice in one literature and a sound sensitivity in another, and the second sense is the one a neurologist means. Basophobia names both a fear of falling and an inability to stand at all. In each case a reader who arrives with one meaning and leaves with the other has been actively misinformed by a page that looked like a reference.
The collisions have causes, and the entries trace them. Some are two disciplines building on the same Greek root without consulting each other, which is how astrophobia and astraphobia ended up one letter apart with different objects. Some are a clinical sense and a colloquial sense drifting until they touch. Some are a term that was ambiguous in the source and got copied ambiguously for a century. The set is ordered so the sharpest collisions come first, and every entry states which sense a given source is using, because that is the only thing that makes the word usable at all.
Hand-set, never alphabetical
The set, in order
12 entries
- Fear of Fresh Air and DraftsAerophobia meant dread of a draught for two hundred years before an aircraft was involved
- Fear of SoundPhonophobia is a fear of one's own voice in one literature and a sound sensitivity in another
- Fear of FallingBasophobia names the fall and, on the same disambiguation page, the inability to stand
- Fear of Stars and Celestial SpaceOne letter separates astrophobia from astraphobia, and the objects have nothing in common
- Fear of ResponsibilityThe dictionary definition covers taking responsibility and neglecting it, which are opposite behaviours
- Fear of the MindPsychophobia is a prejudice term in one usage and a fear of one's own mind in the other
- Fear of SinGreek used one word for missing a target, making a mistake and sinning, and the term inherited all three
- Fear of Venereal DiseaseOne word for the infection and for the act, which is the confusion the entry is about
- Fear of the Opposite SexSexophobia gets four words in the encyclopedia and is used for two different things
- Fear of Certain PlacesTopophobia is a place fear in one source and stage fright in another
- Fear of MenArrhenophobia in one book, androphobia in the dictionaries, and only one of them is carried anywhere
- A Surgeon's Fear of OperatingErgasiophobia is a fear of work in most lists and a surgeon's paralysis in the primary definition
Keep going
The other collections
- 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.
- 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.