neophobia

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English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

neo- +‎ -phobia.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

neophobia (countable and uncountable, plural neophobias)

  1. The fear or hatred of novelty, new things, innovation, or unfamiliar places or situations.
    Synonyms: cainophobia, cainotophobia, misoneism, traditionalism
    Antonym: neophilia
    • 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience […] ‎[1], London: Folio Society, published 2008, page 289:
      the murdering of Mormons and the massacring of Armenians, express much rather that aboriginal human neophobia […] than they express the positive piety of the various perpetrators.
    • 2001 December, Barbara Wallraff, “Word Fugitives”, in The Atlantic Monthly‎[2]:
      In response to the other July/August request, for a word to describe a "fear of inadvertently throwing something valuable out with the garbage," many, many phobias arrived. Evidently the readers who sent them in suffer from neither doxophobia (fear of expressing opinions) nor neophobia (fear of anything new or novel), and some would even seem to be remarkably free of catagelophobia (fear of being ridiculed).

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