hodophobic
/ˌhɑdəˈfoʊbɪk/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
23
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
4
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Example Sentences
- "The majority of the territories usually included in the brain stem reticular formation exhibit the characteristic of "hodophilic" dendrites, in contrast to, for example, the inferior olive and pontine nuclei in which the dendrites are rarely found to extend into fiber bundles and could thus be described as "hodophobic.""
- "The dendrites of the pontine neurons are not as "hodophobic" as those of the inferior olivary nucleus."
- "Ramón-Moliner and Nauta (1966) designated the closed nuclei, in which dendrites do not extend into adjacent fibre bundles, as ‘hodophobic’."
- "This dendritic pattern corresponds to the hodophobic tendencies of allodendritic neurons found in the analogue nucleus of cat,^([sic]) but in the guinea pig these neurons are weakly branched."
- "Ramon-Moliner and Nauta (Ramon-Moliner and Nauta, 1966) proposed division of brainstem nuclei into two major groups: (1) "closed" nuclei with relatively homogeneous perikaryal morphology and specialized, hodophobic dendrites that remain confined to nuclear boundaries; and (2) "open" nuclei with non-specialized (isodendritic) and overlapping dendritic branches, considerable cytological heterogeneity, and hodophilic tendency for spread into nearby fiber bundles."
- "Sigmund Freud, the father of psychology, was hodophobic, afraid of traveling."
Etymology
From hodo- (prefix meaning ‘path, road; travel’) + -phobic (suffix forming adjectives indicating an aversion or dislike, or a fear of a specific thing). Hodo- is derived from Ancient Greek ὁδός (hodós, “path, road, way; journey”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *sed- (“to sit”); while -phobic is from -phobia (from Late Latin -phobia, from Koine Greek -φοβία (-phobía), ultimately from Ancient Greek φόβος (phóbos, “alarm, fear, terror”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰegʷ- (“to flee, run”)) + -ic (suffix forming adjectives meaning ‘of or pertaining to’ from nouns). Sense 1 (“of the dendrites of neurons: tending not to form branches”) was possibly coined by Enrique Ramón-Moliner and Walle Nauta in a 1966 article: see the quotation.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˌhɑdəˈfoʊbɪk/
- British English: /ˌhɒdə(ʊ)ˈfəʊbɪk/
Inflected Forms
more hodophobic (comparative)
most hodophobic (superlative)