photophobia
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.78 in modern English
23
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
4
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Excessive sensitivity to light and the aversion to bright light; abnormal fear of light.
Uncountable
noun
An aversion to or fear of being photographed, the dissemination of personal photographs, or viewing photographs.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Photophobia was the latest affliction of Afghan officialdom—by contagion, probably, from Persia which tries to nip in the bud pictures that show her not yet entirely modern."
- "Craig Armstrong doesn't want to be photographed. His record company wouldn't like it, he says, and besides he has flu so he looks a little puffy. So "orders" and vanity combine to stop the shoot, due to take place in a trendy bar in Glasgow's West End. The cynic may see alternative reasons for the 39-year-old composer's photophobia, […]"
- "He concludes that Mapplethorpe blocks racist photophobia by making the nudes whose penises are not visible highly erotic, while using blatantly penis-focused images to force white viewers to recognize that when they see a black man, they see him not just in possession of a large penis, but actually as a penis (Mercer 1991; Fanon 1952/2008)."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *bʰéh₂os Proto-Hellenic *pʰáwos Ancient Greek φᾰ́ος (phắos) Ancient Greek φῶς (phôs) Ancient Greek φωτο- (phōto-)der. English photo- Proto-Indo-European *bʰegʷ- Ancient Greek φόβος (phóbos) Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-i-eh₂ Proto-Hellenic *-íā Ancient Greek -ῐ́ᾱ (-ĭ́ā) Ancient Greek -φοβία (-phobía)der. Latin New Latinbor. English -phobia English photophobia From photo- + -phobia.