Fear of Long Words

Which form the clinicians use

The 2008 encyclopedia of phobias enters sesquipedalophobia as fear of long words and adds nothing: no case, no figure, no history. Wiktionary's note is more useful, recording that sesquipedalophobia is the term recognised in formal and clinical writing.

That leaves the famous version with no clinical standing at all, which was always the intention.

How the long word was built

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia comes from hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian, itself an extension of sesquipedalian, with ad hoc combining forms of the Latin monstrum, meaning monster, and hippopotamus. The stated purpose of both additions is exaggeration, of the length of the word itself and of the size of the words being feared.

It runs to fifteen syllables. A common misspelling doubles one of the consonants, and the dictionary notes that this is perhaps done on purpose, to make the word even longer.

Wiktionary's usage note delivers the verdict: it is unlikely that this contrivance is ever used purely for its meaning. Wikipedia does not carry an article on it either, only a soft redirect pointing at the dictionary entry.

What the citations do with it

The recorded uses are all newspaper humour and fiction, and there are three of them:

• a newspaper column of April 2002, naming the fear alongside the fear of Friday the thirteenth
• a second column, in December 2002, using the doubled-consonant spelling
• a novel of September 2005, giving the condition to a character in an alleyway

An article in The Scotsman on 19 April 2002 assumed that despite the best endeavours of science some phobias will always remain, and named two: the fear of Friday the thirteenth, and the fear of long words.

A column in The Northern Echo on 14 December 2002 told readers who found the column troubling that they were suffering from the fear of long words, using the doubled-consonant spelling, or more likely from a fear of rubbish, for which the writer supplied another Greek term. A novel of September 2005 gave the condition to a character curled in an alleyway, whispering a famously long English word to himself for two days.

The pattern is the same one that runs through the rare phobia vocabulary. Every author who uses the word explains it in the same sentence, and every use is a joke about naming rather than a description of anybody.

Why the joke has a point

What distinguishes this word from the other list-fillers is that it is self-demonstrating. A term for the fear of long words that is itself the longest word most readers will meet cannot be spoken to a person who has the fear, which is a genuine observation about the whole naming scheme rather than only about this entry in it.

The scheme produces a name for anything by rule, and the rule does not check whether the resulting name is usable, whether the fear has ever been observed, or whether a clinician would ever need to say the word aloud. Zemmiphobia is another product of it. Sesquipedalophobia is what the same system produces when it is not being played for laughs, and it has no more case material behind it than the long version does.