neophobia
/niːəˈfəʊbɪə/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.13 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The fear or hatred of novelty, new things, innovation, or unfamiliar places or situations.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "[T]he 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."
- "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)."
- "Between 6 and 12 months, babies are more open to new foods — and new experiences — than they will be later on as toddlers, when a certain amount of “neophobia” or “new means no” is developmentally normal, Ms. Lipner said. “Normal kids transition through a normal pickiness phase,” around 18 months, she said, when “they’re also learning autonomy and control.”"
Etymology
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- British English: /niːəˈfəʊbɪə/