hydrophobia
/ˌhaɪ.dɹəˈfoʊ.bi.ə/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 1.69 in modern English
25
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
4
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "[…] Cato, who ſcorned both death and fortune, could not abide the ſight of a looking glaſſe or of water; overcome with horrour, and quelled with amazement, if by the contagion of a mad dog he had falne into that ſickneſſe which Phiſitians call Hydroforbia, or feare of waters."
- "Now that I have breathed a little, I am anxious to know your opinion of the nature of that affection in the throat, which deprives a patient of the power of ſwallowing in conſequence of hydrophobia."
- "I myself knew a boy whose face was licked by a dog that was going mad, and who died of hydrophobia."
- "Hydrophobia may, without risk, be applied to the disease in mankind, and serve to distinguish it; but it would be most injudicious to retain it as a designation for the madness or rabies of the lower animals. […] "Hydrophobia" is not even a proper designation for the malady in him [man], inasmuch as authors have described a spontaneous hydrophobia in the human species, or certain symptoms resembling those of hydrophobia, which certainly were not the same as those produced by the bite of a rabid animal, neither was the presence of a transmissible virus proved to exist."
- "The Christian philosophy nominally attributes all natural evils, including sickness and death, to sin. But it has lost the connecting link between the moral disorders and the physical disorders which afflict us. […] It cannot understand […] how there are cancers and plagues and hydrophobias of the soul, the secret causes of those horrible diseases in the body."
- "A young man, 24 years of age, employed as a clerk in a dry goods store, was bitten on a Saturday morning bu a watchdog belonging to the proprietor. […] [H]e stated that he had been reading about rabies and the symptoms which would develop in man from the bite of a rabid dog, and insisted that he was developing hydrophobia as a result of having been bitten by the watchdog. […] Two days later the young man was in a very hysterical state and kept insisting that the dog that bit him was rabid. […] Here was a typical case of lyssophobia or pseudo-rabies, a figment of an overworked imagination, […]"
Etymology
From Middle English idroforbia (“hydrophobia”), from Latin hydrophobia, from Ancient Greek ὑδροφοβία (hudrophobía), from ὑδρο- (hudro-), combining form of ῠ̔́δωρ (hŭ́dōr, “water”), + φοβία (phobía, “phobia”). The word is analysable as hydro- + -phobia.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˌhaɪ.dɹəˈfoʊ.bi.ə/
- British English: /ˌhaɪ.dɹə(ʊ)ˈfəʊ.bi.ə/
Usage
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
Frequently Paired Words
antihydrophobic
hydrophobe
hydrophobic
hydrophobist
hydrophobophobia
superhydrophobe
aquagenic urticaria
aquagenic pruritus