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Definition: Phobia |
PhobiaNoun1. An anxiety disorder characterized by extreme and irrational fear of simple things or social situations; "phobic disorder is a general term for all phobias". Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "phobia" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1900. (references) |
| Domain | Definitions |
Health | A persistent, irrational, intense fear of a specific object, activity, or situation (the phobic stimulus), fear that is recognized as being excessive or unreasonable by the individual himself. When a phobia is a significant source of distress or interferes with social functioning, it is considered a mental disorder; phobic disorder (or neurosis). In DSM III phobic disorders are subclassified as agoraphobia, social phobias, and simple phobias. Used as a word termination denoting irrational fear of or aversion to the subject indicated by the stem to which it is affixed. (references) |
Medicine | A -- is an exaggerated and invariably pathological dread of some specific type of stimulus or situation. Source: European Union. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Psychologists use the term phobia, which comes from the Greek for fear (online translator says φόβος (fovos) is fear, φοβία (fovia\) is phobia), for a number of psychological conditions that can seriously disable their carriers.
Phobias are the most common form of anxiety disorder. An American study by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) found that between 5.1 and 21.5 percent of Americans suffer from phobias. Broken down by age and gender, the study found that phobias were the most common psychiatric illness among women in all age groups and the second most common illness among men older than 25.
Most psychologists divide phobias into three categories:
Many specific phobias can be traced back to a specific triggering event, usually a traumatic experience at an early age. Social phobias and agoraphobia have more complex causes that are not entirely known at this time. It is believed that heredity, genetics and brain-chemistry combine with life-experiences to play a major role in the development of anxiety disorders and phobias.
Phobias vary in severity among individuals, with some phobics simply disliking or avoiding the subject of their fear and suffering mild anxiety. Others suffer fully-fledged panic attacks with all the associated disabling symptoms.
The name of a phobia generally contains a Greek word for what the patient fears plus -phobia. Creating these terms is something of a word game. Few of these terms are found in medical literature. It is possible for a sufferer to become phobic about virtually anything.
10 common phobias include:
Some therapists use virtual reality to desensitize patients to the feared thing. Other forms of therapy that may be of benefit to phobics are graduated exposure therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Anti-anxiety medication can also be of assistance in some cases. Most phobics understand that they are suffering from an irrational fear, but are powerless to override their initial panic reaction.
Graduated Exposure and CBT both work towards the goal of desensitising the sufferer, and changing the thought patterns that are contributing to their panic. Gradual desensitisation treatment and CBT are often extremely successful, provided the phobic is willing to endure some discomfort and to make a continuous effort over a long period of time. Practitioners of neurolinguistic programming (NLP) claim to have a procedure that can be used to alleviate most specific phobias in a single therapeutic session, though this has not yet been verified scientifically.
In some cases, a fear or hatred is not considered a phobia in the clinical sense because it is believed to be only a symptom of other psychic problems, or the result of ignorance. These are phobias in a more general, popular sense of the word:
The opposite of the postfix phobia is a philia or philie ('the love of'), see also list of philias.
See also: angst, anxiety, disabilities, list of phobias
External links
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Phobia."
| The following table is compiled from various sources, across various languages. When English abbreviations or acronyms come from a non-English source, this is noted. | |||
| Entry | Source | Expression | Field |
PHOBIA | English | Photon counting cameras for bioluminescence and autoradiography | Geography |
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |||
Synonyms: PhobiaSynonyms: phobic disorder (n), phobic neurosis (n). (additional references) |
Crosswords: Phobia |
| English words defined with "phobia": phobophobia ♦ school phobia, simple phobia, social phobia. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Movie/TV Titles | Phobia (2001) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Theater & Movies | |
Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Health | The more common are simple phobia (in which the panic occurs immediately before or upon exposure to the feared situation and nowhere else) and social phobias in which they occur only when individuals feel they are the focus of others' attention (e.g. while eating). (references) | |
Other conditions such as major depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, bipolar mood disorder, dissociative disorders, other anxiety disorders such as obsessive compulsive disorder or social phobia, eating disorders, or complex personality disorders may require concurrent treatment. (references) | ||
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Phobia" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 98.04% of the time. "Phobia" is used about 102 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 98.04% | 100 | 32,668 |
| Noun (proper) | 1.96% | 2 | 245,945 |
| Total | 100.00% | 102 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "phobia": person with a phobia ♦ school phobia ♦ simple phobia ♦ social phobia. Additional references. | |
| Hypenated Usage | |
Ending with "phobia": child-phobia, spy-phobia, techno-phobia, yuppie-phobia. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day | Expression | Frequency per Day |
phobia | 2,525 | specific phobia | 16 |
social phobia | 302 | phobia strange | 16 |
phobia list | 216 | different phobia | 14 |
commitment phobia | 122 | phobia picture | 12 |
hypnotherapy london phobia | 44 | flying phobia | 12 |
type of phobia | 44 | phobia of snake | 12 |
fear and phobia | 41 | public speaking phobia | 11 |
phobia name | 34 | friday the 13th phobia | 10 |
phobia dictionary | 28 | phone phobia | 10 |
school phobia | 27 | social phobia medication | 10 |
hypnosis london phobia | 25 | social phobia treatment | 10 |
dental phobia | 23 | clown phobia | 10 |
needle phobia | 22 | common phobia | 10 |
driving phobia | 20 | cause of phobia | 9 |
phobia weird | 20 | different phobia type | 9 |
hypnotherapist london phobia | 19 | anxiety and phobia | 9 |
phobia treatment | 18 | math phobia | 9 |
foot phobia | 17 | curing phobia | 9 |
definition of phobia | 16 | food phobia | 8 |
funny phobia | 16 | dog phobia | 8 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Language | Translations for "phobia"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Albanian | frikë (affright, apprehension, cowardice, dismay, doubt, dread, fear, fright, habdabs, jim-jams, scare, shake), fobi, drojë (dismay, dither, shyness), antipati (animosity, antipathy, dislike). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Arabic | فوبيا مرض الرهاب, هلع (awe, panic, scare, scaring, terror), رهاب. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bulgarian | фобия, отвращение (abhorrence, abomination, allergy, antipathy, detestation, disgust, disrelish, distaste, execration, horror, loathing, nausea, odium, recoil, reluctance, repugnance, repulsion, revolt, scunner, sickener), натраплив страх, болезнен страх. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Czech | fobie. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Danish | fobi. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dutch | fobie. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Esperanto | fobio. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Farsi | نفرت (Aversion, Disgust, Enmity, Hate, Hatred, Malice, Odium), تشویش (Anxiety), انزجار (Abhorrence, Antipathy, Disgust, Mislike, Nausea, Pique), بیم (Awe, Care, Dread, Misgiving, Qualm, Scare, Scruple, Scrupulosity). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Finnish | pelkoneuroosi, fobia. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
French | phobie. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
German | Phobie. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Greek | φοβική νεύρωση, φοβία (fear, fearfulness), άλογοσ φόβοσ. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hebrew | פחד עמוק, בעת. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hungarian | szorongás (anxiety, discomfort, distress, flutter, press), fóbia, félelem (affright, apprehension, awe, dismay, dread, fear, funk, willies). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Indonesian | penyakit ketakutan. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Italian | fobia. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Manx | feoh (abhorrence, antipathy, aversion, disgust, feud, hatred, loathing). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | obiaphay fobia (Phoebe), flox. (various references) fobie. (various references) фобия, невроз страха, боязнь (fear, fright). (various references) fobija. (various references) fobia. (various references) skräck (awe, dread, fright, horror, scare, terror), fobi. (various references) sevmezlik, korkusu, korku (affright, alarm, apprehension, awe, dismay, dread, fear, fright, funk, gothic, horror, misgiving, scare, trepidation), fobisi, fobi. (various references) фобія, боязнь. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "phobia": phobias. (additional references) | |
Words ending with "phobia": acrophobia, agoraphobia, ailurophobia, claustrophobia, computerphobia, homophobia, hydrophobia, negrophobia, photophobia, technophobia, triskaidekaphobia, xenophobia. (additional references) | |
Words containing "phobia": acrophobias, agoraphobias, ailurophobias, claustrophobias, computerphobias, homophobias, hydrophobias, negrophobias, photophobias, technophobias, triskaidekaphobias, xenophobias. (additional references) | |
| |
"Phobia" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: epheboi, fobia, Hobiba, hobie, Hobyah, Hoobaka, phebian, Pheby, phibia, phobe, phobea, phobiae, phobian, phobie, phobos, phoby, phocid, Phocion, phonia, phorbyl, phoria, Photina, Phurba, Pihigia, Pobeda, pobia, Pohamba, Pohlia. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "phobia" (pronounced fō"bēu) |
| 5 | f ō" b ē u | claustrophobia, homophobia, xenophobia. |
| 4 | -ō" b ē u | cobia. |
| 3 | -b ē u | Gambia, suburbia, tibia. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-b-h-i-o-p" | |
-2 letters: obia, ohia, opah. | |
-3 letters: abo, bah, bap, bio, boa, bop, hao, hap, hip, hob, hop, obi, pah, phi, pia, poh, poi. | |
-4 letters: ab, ah, ai, ba, bi, bo, ha, hi, ho, oh, op, pa, pi. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-b-h-i-o-p" | |
+1 letter: phobias. | |
+2 letters: basophil. | |
+3 letters: amphibole, amphiboly, basophile, basophils, biography, chipboard, euphorbia, shipboard. | |
+4 letters: acrophobia, amphibious, amphiboles, archbishop, barhopping, basophiles, basophilia, basophilic, biographee, biographer, biographic, brachiopod, chipboards, euphorbias, homophobia, hospitable, hospitably, shipboards, vibraphone, xenophobia. | |
+5 letters: acrophobias, agoraphobia, agoraphobic, ailurophobe, amphibolies, amphibolite, amphibology, archbishops, barographic, basophilias, biographees, biographers, biographies, biophysical, brachiopods, branchiopod, haptoglobin, homophobias, hydrophobia, negrophobia, photophobia, vibraphones, xenophobias. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)50 68 6F 62 69 61 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references).--. .... --- -... .. .- |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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| Amazon.com BOOKS: Search for: "phobia" |
