Appendix talk:English unattested phobias

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Phobias of 194.176.105.39

Anon user 194.176.105.39 has added a number of phobias [1]. Some of these seem to be protologisms, as I cannot imagine any documented cases of a "fear of trees" or a "fear of time". The contributions consist only of the "meaning", with no language, no formatting, nor anything else. --EncycloPetey 13:36, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I've been looking through google books, and there is the occasional citation - Citations:dendrophobia for example. It seems a real shame to delete all of these out of hand, and it seems likely that people will try to recreate these in the future. Should we perhaps have an Appendix:Imaginary phobias into which the well-mentioned, yet CFI failing words could be put in order to document them? Conrad.Irwin 13:43, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

If they do not pass CFI, then I don't see why they should deserve a special Appendix. Unlike Tolkienisms & co., I can't imagine looking up these words could be at all useful. --EncycloPetey 13:47, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

It would be useful to provide a definitive "This word doesn't exist" instead of the possibility that Wiktionary merely hasn't got around to adding it yet. Conrad.Irwin 14:01, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Isn't that (part of) the purpose of WT:LOP?—msh210℠ 16:21, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

In a way, though I'm not sure they are protologisms as such, many of them have dictionary definitions throughout the 20th Century, it's just that no-one does anything with them except make lists... 16:30, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The google books mentions of dendrophobia look to me to all be references to a single poem by Robert Frost. It seems to be a nonce word. However, there looks to be a second sense meaning "fear of branching diagrams" or of "forked decision making paths" that shows up in two of the sources. There may be a valid definition for this one, but most of the book hits on Google appear to be mention in dictionaries rather than use. Mentions do not satisfy the requirements of CFI. --EncycloPetey 13:51, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Items in the Appendix wouldn't seem to need to meet CFI, just as we have no provision for extirpating redlinks that don't meet CFI in our main entries and just as we allow users to use non-CFI words outside of principal namespace even outside of quotes. I actually thought that appendices were extremely useful as a repository for this kind of thing (fictional characters, protologisms, wiktionary glossary). I'd be happy if we had appendices (or, even better, an alternative namespace) for terms more often mentioned than used. DCDuring TALK 14:26, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

See Appendix:Invented phobias. I am of the opinion that all of them fail CFI. Conrad.Irwin 15:56, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

No surprise. I'm happy that we have them and happier yet that we don't have them in principal namespace. One of my wishes would be that their presence in an Appendix would be automatically registered when they are requested as new entries, which is why I like to think of an alternative namespace for them. Citation and Talk space for them is almost as good. DCDuring TALK 16:04, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I've used the relatively undiscussed probably hated {{only in}} for now - see aurophobia. If people want all these deleting I don't mind too much, but I feel that this is more useful for the moment. Conrad.Irwin 16:09, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

What? No lexicophobia? ([2]]) Much more common than fear of trees. (to be clear, no use, several interesting mentions, including the link) Robert Ullmann 14:50, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Great blog. I wish he were still at it. DCDuring TALK 16:04, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I like Conrad's solution, but just a comment: in cases like this where nonce-words exist formed from obviously valid roots, I often use them as citations for the component parts. Eg if there's only one cite for dendrophobia it could be used as a citation on the dendro- page (along with possible nonces dendrophilia, dendrophagy etc.). Eventually if you get 3 for any one form, it could justify a new page. This also means Wiktionary throws something up when you search for a term like that. Widsith 16:29, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I like Conrad's solution, too. I like us having some coverage of the terms and hits on search engines without suggesting that they are "real" words. I wonder if we could suggest real words as synonyms for some of these, even in {{only in}}. DCDuring TALK 16:38, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Add 'koumpounophobia'?

Fear of buttons, apparently.