While I feel horrible for anyone confronting a phobia, some of the less common phobias are, um, borderline hilarious. Fear of snakes and spiders? I understand. Fear of air? Not so much.
(And yes, fear of air actually exists — it’s called anemophobia, if you’re curious. I didn’t know what it was a called, which is how I ended up on this site, doing a reverse look-up of phobias after WebMD indicated that fear of air is a symptom of rabies.)
For today’s post-lunch distraction, here’s a list of my newly-discovered favorite phobias:
- Caligynephobia: fear of beautiful women. I think the Beach Boys named this one.
- Deipnophobia: fear of dinner conversation. Pretty sure I’ve dated this guy.
- Consecotaleophobia: fear of chopsticks. I’m going to guess the diagnosis of this runs pretty low in rural America.
- Euphobia: fear of hearing good news. I want to meet this person. Sounds like a real Debby Downer: “Do you want me to start with the bad news or the –” “NO!”
- Basophobia: fear of the inability to stand. How does this seed even get planted in one’s mind? And does it seize them only when they’re seated?
- Arachibutyrophobia: fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth.
- Papaphobia: fear of the Pope. Nice to know he ranks up there with clowns for some people.
Interestingly, there is a whole list of phobias that I would argue aren’t phobias, but are, rather, NORMAL fears… like thanataphobia (fear of death) or taeniophobia (fear of tapeworms).
And of course, the men out there who are rolling their eyes, saying phobias are for sissies… I have one word for you: Medmalacuphobia.
Look it up.
pithypants 
How sad is it, in a ranking from 1 to 10, that I wish I had one of these phobias? I’m thinking 8 but I fear that may be too low.
I once looked up the list of phobias and didn’t know whether to feel sad (for the poor people who suffered) or happy (that I found such a ridiculous list to make fun of). I think psychiatrists have way too much time on their hands and convince people that their aversion is a phobia. Then they get to use all those Latin courses they took to name a new phobia so they can get published in some journal (unless they have a fear of publishing…publishophobia).
Great post, again!
Caligynephobia: fear of beautiful women. I’m convincing myself that this is to blame for my lack of dates (avoiding the idea that it has anything to do with the size of my ass).
I wish I had discovered this word before I hit puberty. It would’ve served me well for decades!
Seriously? Peanut butter sticking to your mouth? I think you just put that idea in my head and now I’m getting nervous.
It seemed ridiculous to me, until I remembered the panic caused by a banana chip stuck in my mouth. It makes it a bit more understandable.
◦Consecotaleophobia – I don’t know, at least the aversion (great word, Lorna) to the use of chopsticks in rural America seems pretty prevalent to me, and why wouldn’t you want to learn to use them when they make Chinese food taste so much better?
◦Arachibutyrophobia – I’ve had dogs with this phobia, because my husband’s family used to put the peanut butter on a scrap of supersoft white bread and stick it to the roof of the dog’s mouth on purpose. The moistened white bread stopped the dog from getting any traction with its tongue, and I’ve seen dogs take ten minutes plus of licking/gulping to get the last of the peanut butter swallowed.
Fortunately, dogs don’t have psychologists, so they can’t develop phobias. Which means they’ll fall for the peanut butter bread trick every time!
i have fear of visiting baskin n robins n not finding my flavor …yeh and of-course fear of being called by my boss just when i got me a hot cup of coffee…
is there a word for fear of not finding my black tshirt because my mom threw it in washing machine…
crap i need to visit this site… 😉
nice post