Fears & Anxieties --Essay IV

The last three essays have contained my ruminations on the 1989 Encyclopedia of Phobias, Fears & Anxieties, with special attention to the issue of the naming or categorizing of our fears. My thesis has been that until the mid-1920s there were only about 26 defined "phobias" in the English language (list below), but when this Encyclopedia came out in 1989, more than 600 distinct phobias were listed. Many of them were built off obscure Greek (and less frequently, Latin) roots, but some of them were so "obvious" as to be seemingly manufactured for the occasion of the Encyclopedia. In fact, it seemed that the production of this Encyclopedia, by no less reputable a press than Oxford U Press, actually contributed to a cottage industry in "phobias," aided by the proliferation of Internet sites in the 1990s and 2000s, so that now anyone can get online and boast that s/he can help cure you of your phobias. My contention is that some fears are real; indeed, we all have them, but that the multiplication of words for fears in the past few decades excites more laughter than serious consideration. In my judgment the primary virtue of the Encyclopedia (2nd ed. 2000) is to give us lots of Greek and Latin roots that we need to study so that we can enhance our English vocabulary. The purpose of this and the next essay is to pick up on one remaining comment on fears of dirt (from the previous essay) and then list and work through what I call the 25 "classic" phobias.

Cleaning up the "Dirt"

I argued in the previous essay that there was a classic term for fear of dirt--mysophobia (origin 1879) but that sometime in the 20th century (the Encyclopedia is tone-deaf on historical issues), we picked up the term blennophobia, which means "fear of slime." Indeed, a synonym for blennophobia is myxophobia, where the root muxa means "slime" or "dirt." But then, as I was trying to get myself out of all this dirt, I ran across a few other terms that the Encyclopedia says mean "fear of dirt" -- rhypophobia, rupophobia, molysomophobia [a molysmos, in Greek, is a "spot" or "stain"; the word occurs in the New Testament--II Cor. 7:1] and, almost surely mistakenly, misophobia. There is actually a Greek word rhypos (with the first vowel being a upsilon), which means "dirt, filth." Actually it is a pretty rich word, with loads of word combinations such as "rhyparobios"--"of a sordid life," "rhyparophagos"--"foul-feeding," etc., and there are even a few English words, attested in the OED, which begin with rhypo. It has rhypophagy, which is the "eating of filth." I love the 1881 quotation using the word--it sounds so British: "Rypophagy is not, on the whole, a healthy practice." Thanks. The Century has rhypophagous, derived from the same word, and defines it as "of or pertaining to the Rhypophaga." What is a Rhypophaga? Well, according to the Century, the Rhypophaga was, "in some systems," a "predaceous water-beetle." This might have been the case 100 years ago (when the Century was put out), but when I did an internet search on Rhyphophaga, I came up empty. It must have been a questionable term 100 years ago that then fell by the wayside. I am sure there is an interesting chapter (or perhaps only a footnote!) in intellectual history on that issue.

Well, let's continue on rhypo (dirt, filth) for a moment. There was a fascinating term in the 19th century, either rhypography or rhyparography, to describe the painting of "mean or sordid subjects," mostly still-life or genre painting. If we go back to the Greek root we can see what is happening. There actually are two Greek words, rhyparos and rhypos, which mean "dirt" or "filth." Thus, English words formed off the Greek concept would either be rhyparo- or rhypo- words. Rhyparography actually appeared prior to rhypography. One reference to it (as ryparography) appeared in the 17th century, but the first real attestation of rhyparography appeared in the same sentence with the first attestation of pornography--in Smith's 1842 Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquity: "Rhyparography, pornography, and all the lower classes of art.." Thus we have sordid painting described pretty fully in one sentence. It would make sense that a rhyparographer is a painter of these sordid subjects, whatever they were. One could even speak of a rhyparographic touch that some artists seemed to have. In fact, some in 2007 might well describe the scenes "painted" in the movie Borat to be rhyparographic.

But before we return to our fears, I need to mention one or two more words. Recall that in the "modern" phobia world, fear of dirt can supposedly be referred to not just as rhypophobia but also as rupophobia. Of course this usage isn't attested in any dictionary I know, but the OED has one reference to a "rupo"-word: "rupography." But rather than having anything to do with filth or dirt, this rupo is derived from the other meaning of the Greek rhypo--sealing wax. Thus, rupography, a term that was attested in the 19th century but seems to have died out, is "the art of taking an impression of a coin or medal upon sealing wax." Thus, I really don't think that we should be introducing words such as rupophobia to express a fear of dirt or contamination, especially when we don't really have any words in English related to dirt that begin with "rupo."

As fortune would have it, however, I wandered into a nearby word that I want to relate in this context, however. Though the prefix rupo is not really attested in English, we have rupia, an admittedly obsolete word derived from rhypos. But right next to it we have the word Rupicapra and rupicaprine, the latter of which happened to be a word in the final rounds of the 2005 National Spelling Bee. Here the initial "rupi" is derived from the Latin (rather than Greek) "rupes," which means rock. Thus, something rupicaprine relates to a genus of antelopes (a "capra" is a goat). Then we have the word rupicolous as something that lives in rocks. We also have the word saxicolous to mean "living in rocks" but now we are really getting far afield.

Conclusion--Back to Our Fears

Let me conclude this essay by listing 26 "classic" terms for fears, which means 26 "phobia" words attested by the OED before 1925. An asterisk after the word means that I defined and gave examples of it in this essay. The next essay will define the other 14, and then wander down the road of our fears and anxieties a little further.

1. Hydrophobia* (1547)
2. Psychrophobia (1727)
3. Aerophobia* (1775)
4. Phonophobia (1841)
5. Astrophobia* (1871)
6. Pathophobia (1873)
7. Agoraphobia* (1873)
8. Cynophobia (1879)
9. Claustrophobia* (1879)
10. Mysophobia (1879)
11. Anthropophobia* (1880)
12. Phthisiophobia (1883)
13. Ochlophobia (1885)
14. Gynophobia* (1886)
15. Nosophobia (1889)
16. Pyrophobia (1890)
[16A Deipnophobia (1891)--discovered 8/5/08]
17. Acrophobia* (1892)
18. Nyctophobia (1892)
19. Erythrophobia* (1894)
20. Bacteriophobia (1894)
21. Brontophobia* (1905)
22. Ailurophobia (1905)
23. Xenophobia (1909)
24. Triskaidekaphobia (1911)
25. Homophobia* (1920)
26. Arachnophobia* (1925).

*Since completeing this list, I have discovered the following three terms:

27. Hemaphobia or Hematophobia (1857--hemaphobia)
28. Thanatophobia (1860)
29. Algophobia (1897)

Now let's turn to some of the non-asterisked terms.

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