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The English suffixes -phobia, -phobic, -phobe (from Greek φόβος phobos, "fear") occur in technical usage in psychiatry to construct words that describe irrational, abnormal, unwarranted, persistent, or disabling fear as a mental disorder (e.g. agoraphobia), in chemistry to describe chemical aversions (e.g. hydrophobic), in biology to describe organisms that dislike certain conditions (e.g ...
Fear of the unknown or irrational fear is caused by negative thinking which arises from anxiety accompanied by a subjective sense of apprehension or dread. [23] Irrational fear shares a common neural pathway with other fears, a pathway that engages the nervous system to mobilize bodily resources in the face of danger or threat.
[1] [2] Often, it arises from ignorance, a misunderstanding of science or causality, a belief in fate or magic, or fear of that which is unknown. It is commonly applied to beliefs and practices surrounding luck , prophecy , and certain spiritual beings, particularly the belief that future events can be foretold by specific (apparently ...
The word phobia comes from the Greek: φόβος (phóbos), meaning "fear" or "morbid fear". The regular system for naming specific phobias uses prefixes based on a Greek word for the object of the fear, plus the suffix -phobia .
Neophobia is the fear of anything new, especially a persistent and abnormal fear. In its milder form, it can manifest as the unwillingness to try new things or break from routine. In the context of children the term is generally used to indicate a tendency to reject unknown or novel foods. [1]
Fear of the unknown and unknowable. [20] The "fear and awe we feel when confronted by phenomena beyond our comprehension, whose scope extends beyond the narrow field of human affairs and boasts of cosmic significance". [21] Here horror derives from the realization that human interests, desires, laws and morality have no meaning or significance ...
However, submechanophobia, by definition, only concerns artificial, human-made creations—not living creatures. A suggested explanation is that the human mind instinctively detects a foreign object in an otherwise natural environment, and this triggers a fight-or-flight response, as humans respond negatively to that which is outside of the norm.
The Greek root word pan (ex. pan-ic) describes "the unpleasant state inflicted by the intervention of the god Pan." [ 2 ] Pan is characterized as a human–animal hybrid who "appeared as the agent of panic fear (that collective, animal-like disorder that seizes military camps at rest, especially at night) and of a form of individual possession ...