Collection · 12 entries
When the Suffix Is an Accusation
Homophobia, islamophobia, transphobia, russophobia: the suffix in each of these does something no clinical term does. It names a prejudice by describing it as a fear, which moves the problem from the person holding the attitude to a condition they can be said to suffer from. The words are useful, they are widely used, and several of them have serious scholarship behind them, but not one is a phobia as any diagnostic manual defines one. The encyclopedia of phobias gives xenophobia three words while the sociological literature gives it a survey of every continent, and that gap is the subject of this set.
The entries here are grouped by what the suffix is doing rather than by who the prejudice targets. Some were coined deliberately as clinical claims and meant literally: Leon Pinsker argued in 1882 that judeophobia was a hereditary psychic disorder and therefore incurable. Some were built on the pattern of an earlier word without the argument coming with them. Some, like hoplophobia, were invented specifically so that a political position could be described as an illness. Each entry documents the coinage, the date, who uses the word and in what sense, and says plainly where the fear is notional. Reading them together makes the pattern visible in a way no single entry can.
Hand-set, never alphabetical
The set, in order
12 entries
- XenophobiaThe encyclopedia gives it three words and the sociology gives it a continent-by-continent survey
- JudeophobiaCoined in September 1882 by a physician who meant the clinical claim literally and argued it was incurable
- HomophobiaGeorge Weinberg coined it in the 1960s, and the word carried its clinical framing into ordinary speech
- TransphobiaBuilt on the pattern of homophobia, and behaving like xenophobia rather than like a fear
- IslamophobiaAttested in English from 1923, translating a French term, and argued over ever since
- LesbophobiaExists as a separate word because homophobia and misogyny combine into something neither names
- RomaphobiaMore names than almost any other prejudice, several built on a root that means untouchable
- RussophobiaUsed as a political accusation in 1836, before it described anybody's feelings
- SinophobiaProduced the first American immigration law written against a single nationality
- AcephobiaTwo studies measuring it, which is more evidence than most of the prejudice terms carry
- Fear of GunsHoplophobia was coined by a firearms writer precisely so that a political position could be called an illness
- Fear of the MindPsychophobia is one of four names for the same prejudice, and the one that borrows the medical vocabulary
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.
- One Word, Two Different FearsAerophobia, phonophobia, basophobia: terms carrying two unrelated senses, with the collision traced and the usable meaning named.