Acronyms can be unfortunate. Ask the Cambridge University Netball Team. (I’ll wait.) But their overuse constitutes a ubiquitous war on clarity. People genuinely dislike the over-reliance in communication on acronyms which risks creating a we-know/you-don’t-know division. Surprisingly it is a phobia without a name, though campaigns have started to have the condition recognised with the word acronymophobia. This is far too literal - paradoxically, a suitable name for fear of acronyms should have that aforementioned we-know/you-don’t-know club exclusivity to it.
Some have suggested acrophobia - they can’t have that, as it already exists as my condition: the fear of heights. Perhaps a suitable name for the phobia of encountering acronyms ought to be pedantophobia, since many a pedant enjoys pointing out that it’s not an acronym unless the collection of letters spells a pronounceable word. Totally What Annoys Them would therefore be a true acronym as you can pronounce the lettered abbreviation as a word to a pedant: TWAT.
Bathmophobia, as we have already learnt, is a legitimate fear of stairs, and climacophobia is the condition of being fearful of falling downstairs. And, um, I suffer from this, although not as acutely, or cutely, as I did when a young child. Being terrified of stairs is borderline socially acceptable for a three-year-old, but becomes increasingly difficult when you enter your forties. This is why I prefer not to tell anyone and suffer in silent humiliation - in common with other phobia suffers - I know, just when you weren’t expecting a serious point to be made!
Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia - and they surely could have accomplished the job with fewer letters (presumably the lexicographers were being paid by the hour rather than word when they forged that noun in the word factory) - defines the fear of the number 666, though it should also be the fear of spelling unnecessarily longwinded words or, should anyone attempt slipping this into general everyday conservation, fear of meeting Britain’s most pretentious man. Though you wonder when anyone would ever select using the word ahead of merely saying “I’m phobic about the number 666” given that relatively short number of syllables would always be destined to win a pronunciation race ahead of “I’ve got hexakosio...” until concluding fully twelve seconds later in “...aphobia”. This will lead to the inevitable requested follow-up explanation: “I’m phobic about the number 666” proceeded immediately by “why didn’t you say that in the first place?” Nor is it a good one to use in classified adverts, telegrams (should you ever time travel) or in any other format where you are charged by the word. There is also a likely risk of inducing hellenologophobia (fear of scientific technical terminology). Oh, and also fear of Greek things like salty white cheese cubes, taramasalata, ouzo and EU bailouts.
Ergophobia is being fearful of work, which to a German is interchangeable with the aforementioned hellenologophobia. Germanphobia is a frustratingly rare, and yet welcomed, phobia - not in the sense of advocating racial discrimination against our European sausage-munching brethren, but because it is transparently named: Germanphobia is, refreshingly, exactly what you would expect. Although Germans may stereotype Britons as being ergophobic, which leads to potential Germanphobia.
Hypengyophobia is a fear of responsibility, unatoxophobia is the fear of tidiness, eosophobia is being fearful of daylight, while autoerotinteruptusphobia is the condition of being irrational fearful of discovered self-pleasuring. All four combined at once is also known as “being a teenager”.
Suffering from a fear of trains and train travel experiences is known as sideromophobia - or being a First Great Western passenger (or, as they prefer to call you, customer). The fear of being called a customer rather than passenger is simply “being normal”.)
Samhainophobia is not the rather specific and impolite fear of Sam Hain - a bloke of that name used to run a chip shop in a Bedfordshire town where I once lived. He seemed fairly easy going, so I’m surprised he has been rewarded by being singled out for individual scorn by the Oxford English Dictionary - their chief lexicographer must have had a seriously bad bag of chips there. Instead samhainophobia is the fear of Halloween. Paradoxically, being fearful of an event that exists to generate fear is already getting into the spirit of the event that sufferers are supposed to dislike. If you really wish to scare and terrify modern children senseless when they visit your door trick and treating, instead of giving them sweets, try offering them some pieces of actual fruit and veg. Ding, dong. Open door. Announce: “Healthy raw vegetable crudités, children?” “Arrrggghhhh!!!!!”
Lachanophobia is the persistent fear of vegetables. Rather than being trauma triggered by an unfortunate radish-based accident in earlier life, this condition is extremely prevalent among some groups of sufferers, where it is also known in technical clinician’s language as either lachanophobia or “being Scottish”.
Hippophobia is obviously a fear of a particular animal. That’s right. A horse. Obviously. You knew that. What? Yes, a horse. There appears to be no word for fear of hippopotami. Which is odd, because they’re bloody dangerous!
Rather callously in my opinion, psellismophobia is the technical name for expressing a fear of stuttering. It is also an impossible word to pronounce without inducing an involuntary stutter.
Proctophobia is the fear of bottoms, which cannot be a phobia that afflicts Kylie Minogue or top twerker Miley Cyrus, since that pair - or rather quadrant - of celebrity buttock owners have exposed theirs more often than a rebus monkey over the past decades. Fear of moons - the big white circular rock orbiting earth, rather than Kyle’s or Miley’s hot derriere, is selenophobia. This is a relatively rare condition, although it would have been unfortunate if any of the extensively trained twelve Apollo astronauts suddenly discovered upon lunar touchdown - especially original pre-Michael Jackson moonwalker Neil Armstrong - that they suffered from this unusual phobia. “Sorry guys, but I don’t think I want to step on the moon after all, so if we could just go home instead. We haven’t put much time or effort into this Apollo project, have we?”
Hylophobia is a fear of woods and forests, a condition presumably accentuated during childhood when all those stories take place in shadowy forests. Alternatively, isopterophobia is the specific fear of only wood-consuming insects. Sufferers would therefore be terrified of a woodworm, but register no fear when deciding to pick up a scorpion.
Malaxophobia is a fear of foreplay - a condition that I suspect afflicts exactly half the population. You know which half. I am surprised that Ann Summers don’t market a Foreplay Timer for women to buy their menfolk (“twenty minutes of compulsory warming up exercises, or the only thing you’re banging tonight is your own head in frustration.”) Hmm... That’s my Dragon’s Den pitch sorted out.
Pentheraphobia is the fear of a mother-in-law, also known as Les Dawson’s entire forty-year showbiz career.
Homophobia we recognise as a prejudicial fear against gay people. Meanwhile hodophobia is the fear of road travel and hobophobia is, fittingly, the fear of beggars. Hence, feeling bigoted towards a driving gay tramp renders you hodo-homo-hobo-phobic, which is extravagantly bigoted, but also sounds rather mellifluous.
Disappointingly, hohohophobia is neither the fear of Santa Claus nor prostitutes. Indeed, suffering an abnormal fear of prostitutes is cypridophobia - the same word being indistinguishable from a fear of contacting venereal disease. Suffering acute cypridphobia must also cause awkwardness whenever a known sufferer starts developing allergic reactions to a lady in social situations, particularly when she’s hosting a posh middle-class dinner party.
Meanwhile, hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is, disappointingly in my view, not the fear of hippos. In fact, the later word (I can’t type it again without inducing RSI) is authentically the fear of long words. Irony overload. It is also a magnificent source of points in Scrabble, although your opponent may reasonably request an explanation for why you currently have 35 tiles in your rack.
The chronic fear of dancing is known as chorop
hobia, while the fear of Strictly Come Dancing is called “having good taste”.
This might also induce sesquipedalophobia, which is a fear of deploying long words. Again, this is a particularly cruel clinical name for the condition, as sufferers attempting referral for treatment must constantly endure terror when informing administrators, counsellors, receptionists and doctors of their condition. Fear of users of long words is not, alas, pretentiouswankerphobia.
Mycophobia is a fear of mushrooms, rather than a fear of people called Mike. Orthophobia is the fear of property, yet no phobia has yet been coined to describe estate agents
Paraskavedekatriaphobia is the fear of Friday the 13th - the calendar date not the over exploited movie franchise series. Parthenophobia is the fear of meeting a virgin woman, which explains why so many afflicted sufferers prefer to move to Essex as a popular cure.
Elsewhere, tiny distinctions between the spellings of phobias can reveal crucial differences. For example, genophobia is the fear of sex, whilst geniophobia is a fear of chins. These are crucial distinctions, unless you are married to either Bruce Forsyth or Jimmy Hill, when they constitute pretty much the same thing.
Two other phobias share a close similarity in their description if not condition: Europhobes are well-known in the British press for being sceptical about Britain’s membership of the European Union, though Europhobia should not be confused with Eurotophobia - the latter being a fear of a female’s genitals. That is also known as NigelFaragephobia - er, to clarify: both the former and... oh yeah, why not... the latter phobias.
Medomalacuphobia is the fear of losing an erect penis, which must be the panic invoked when realising, “now, it must be somewhere around here - I’ll try thinking back to when I last saw it - oh yeah, before I got fat.”
Official NHS health advice guidelines state that if an adult male is unable to see his own penis, then he is classified as morbidly obese and should address immediate weight loss. However, if like me you have an eighteen-inch penis, then this advice is flawed - as even though I may be clinically obese, I can still see it. OK, not really. Maybe it does help sufferers to think back to the last place where they definitely remember having it, although that will probably be on the Internet. Being frightened of losing an erection is different to megalophobia, defined as the condition where sufferers fear large or big things. No - before you say it - none of my girlfriends have encountered that phobia.
Glimpsing a man’s penis may induce an attack of phallophobia in a woman (fear of seeing a penis), which is a preferable response to inducing an attack of microphobia, a fear of unusually tiny things.
Women explaining to the majority of men that their erection does not induce an attack of megalophobia - the aversion to large things - is known as... well, insensitivity, mainly. Complimenting a man on his size risks him being doxophobic: doxophobia is the condition of harbouring an irrational fear of praise.
Consecotaleophobia is the mortal fear of chopsticks - the eating implements not primitive piano playing. Katagelophobia sufferers deserve mocking because they suffer from a fear of ridicule. Meanwhile a limnophobic person hosts a specific fear of lakes; presumably they are fine with ponds, marinas, seas, rivers, tarns, canal basins, lidos, pools and puddles, but freak out at the suggestion of seeing a lake.
Anyone enduring mnemophobia would endure painful psychoanalysis treatment when asked to recall when they first experience mnemophobia and subsequent triggers for the condition - it is the fear of experiencing memories.
Zemmiphobia is an abject fear of the naked desert mole rat, and a hard one to elicit sympathy for - or indeed claim incapacity benefit for the infliction and time off work - given that the rodent is a resident of one extremely small deserted area of Eastern Africa.
Maybe that’s enough technical phobias. If so, you could be suffering from verbophobia: a fear of words - and undoubtedly a lexicographer’s sick note of choice.
With so many fears given official acknowledgment by the dictionary, you seriously wonder if a significant amount of the population are just afraid of their own shadow. Actually, that’s included too: sciophobia is the fear of seeing shadows. Since pupaphobia is the fear of puppets, a sciophobic pupaphobe would not enjoy an evening of shadow puppetry. And if that’s too many technical names for phobias, then you could be suffering from nomatophobia, a fear of names. And in case you’re wondering, phobophobia is a fear of phobias.
Apologies for any of the highly opinionated remarks expressed above if you suffer from allodoxaphobia, the fear of opinions. There are too many aggressively held opinions masquerading as facts in the world, and I for one would like to promote more allodoxaphobia.
And it’s probably time I unstuck myself from epistemophobia - that’s an aversion to knowledge - and educated myself about phobias: their causes, definitions and treatments. I want to learn why phobias are so prevalent and what current advances in psychology have discovered. Find out the latest score in the Nature v. Nurture contest.
I need to do this if I have any real ambition of shedding my phobias so that I can ascend in a balloon to replicate James Sadler’s achievement and look down on the same view that Sadler had of Oxford’s skyline. Let’s do this thing.
The Missing Years: Sadler’s Curious Career
What impresses people is generational. When the first street lights appeared, thousands of people flocked to see them, then stood beneath them, looking up in silent wonder. Some had travelled huge distances to observe the street lighting. Now if you stood and stared at a street light, passers-by would probably call social services. But is the wonder any less now than then at this unnatural capacity to make the darkness vanish?
James Sadler was at the forefront of this modern wonder, pioneering research into burning coal gas as an illuminant. He worked on a process that became known as gasification, where subjecting coal to a process of chemical reactions would force out combustible gas. Coal gas became such an efficient and popular fuel for domestic use that it remained in regular use until the 1960s when the discovery of North Sea gas prompted household cookers and other gas appliances to be transferred to new models designed for burning natural gas.
He had garnered enormous success and fame (but probably not money as Sadler’s motivation appeared more scientifically driven than commercial in his first years of aeronautics). For someone who invented so much that was put to practical use, he appears to have lived a frugal existence, utterly reliant upon his friends’ generosity in later life in order to move back to Oxford. The number of flights he took between 1784 and 1785, and then from 1810 until his second aeronautical retirement, varies between accounts and newspapers. Totalling his balloon voyages is rendered impossible by the lack of distinction in the reports between Sadler senior and his sons. We are further confused by a third Mr. Sadler, his son John, who also occasionally flew the family balloon, adding a third flying Sadler to Windham and, of course, his dad. On at least one occasion, father and son swapped before take-off, resulting in contrasting reports that credited different aeronauts for the same voyage. Undisputed evidence as to why he suddenly curtailed ballooning remains simply unknown, abandoned to speculation.
Or did Mrs. Sadler simply put down her (probably clogged) foot and point out that he had a wife and family, which would be quite hard to support if he changed his status from “aeronaut and pastry cook” to “deceased”?
By the time he eventually returned to flying Sadler had not been in a balloon basket for a considerable time. Recommencing his aeronautical activities exactly one quarter of a century later, he was then at the advanced age of fifty-seven. The one activity that had made him a national celebrity and able to count MPs and Cabinet Ministers as close friends was ballooning. So why did he abandon the activity for so long? Certainly one contributory reason was the abrupt ending of support from Oxford University.
Sadler had encountered a bumpy ride from the Universit
y. After he had initially gained its approval, there were plenty of witnesses prepared to testify that the University was jealous of Sadler’s accomplishments and of headlines gained by a working-class Townsman. Sir John Coxe Hippisley observed: “Sadler has been harshly used... there is not a better chemist or mechanic.” Others used the word “pique” to describe the University’s attitude towards him. A letter sent to his friend and Cabinet Minister William Windham had shed light on this fallout with the University, alluding to “pique and jealousy of his superior science”. The author of the letter was Colonel Richard Fitzpatrick, who had just found himself on an unexpected solo flight.
24 JUNE 1785: CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD
After the University initially championed Sadler’s achievements in 1784, the relationship appears to have curdled. Was this due to an incident at Corpus Christi College on 24 June 1785? This was a day of undoubted importance in aeronautical history, as various University dignitaries including the Chancellor had been invited to attend alongside Fellows of the Royal Society - all in the presence of one Dr. Horsley. The refined were dressed in their finery, awaiting Sadler’s planned ascent.
Regrettably, Sadler had either overestimated the balloon’s capacity to carry four passengers or had been unable to refuse requests from such high-status members of the scientific community to be passengers. Lifting four adult dignitaries - none of them a stranger to the dessert trolley - was a tall order for Sadler. The results were predictably farcical.
From first light until Sadler signalled at 1.30pm that the balloon envelope was sufficiently inflated to attempt take-off, people and traffic “had been incessantly pouring into the city of Oxford”. One newspaper observed: “The operation was greatly impeded by the pressure of the crowd.” Even fencing off a large part of Corpus Christi had only temporarily kept the encroaching multitudes at bay, all desperate to glimpse Sadler.
The Man With His Head in the Clouds Page 14