Wrixlings

Three words that I quite like from Englandish are ‘phobe’, ‘phile’, and ‘maniac’. They’re very productive and really succinct. Also, they offer us a useful set of specific medical terms. However, they do come from Greek, and therefore we should try to replace them in Anglish. So let’s think about the meaning of these words and what we could therefore replace them with.

Phobias

A ‘phobia’ is an irrational fear and/or hatred of any given thing. So ‘arachnophobia’ is literally the irrational fear and/or hatred of spiders. So how to translate this affix?

We could simply use the word “fear”, e.g., “spiderfear”. But “fear” doesn’t quite capture the meaning of “phobia”. For example, maybe your fear of spiders is not irrational but healthy and well-founded, knowing as you do a great deal about their physiology and venomous capacities. How are we to make this distinction between rational and irrational fears? On top of that, “fear” does not by itself contain the “hatred” element that is often extant in the state of phobia.

We could, then, say “hate” or “hatred” (from now on in, when I say “hate” in this context, I am also referring equally to “hatred”). However, the same problems arise. That is, we are not marking this out as an irrational hate, and neither are we indicating the fear aspect of phobias.

So why not put the two together and say “fearhate” or “hatefear”? The problem is that this is longish, and we are still not indicating the key point that what we are dealing with is not a well-founded, reasonable fear, but an irrational, medical one.

We could, given these points, say, “unfoundedfearandorhatred”. But this doesn’t quite work, although I can’t put my finger on why…

Having said all of that, I’ll probably end up shocking you now. I don’t believe using “fear”, as a sort of pseudo-suffix, is inadequate a replacement for ‘phobia’. Indeed, I think it is more than up to the job. The reason I think this, despite everything I have just said, is because if you wish to say that you have a fear of a certain thing, whether this fear is objectively well-founded or not, you would not naturally say, for example, “I have spider-fear”. You would use one of the following: “I’m scared of spiders”, “I’ve got a fear of spiders”, “I’m afraid of spiders”, and so on. Thus I feel that using “fear” in this compound-cum-suffix way would not be confusing and, in fact, could clearly be used to indicate a more specific, technical sense; that is, phobia. Why isn’t this confusing? Because “fear” isn’t used syntactically in this way at the moment, thus such use of it would stand-out and indicate a potentially different meaning to the listener. Therefore, we could readily use “fear” as a kind-of suffix to indicate the specific sense of “phobia”.

Given what I’ve just said, you might want to suggest “-hate” instead of “-fear”. But I feel that “fear” works slightly better, meaning-wise. Mainly this is because a phobia may involve hate, but then again it may not, whereas it seems to invariably involve pathological fear.

Thus, for “phobia”, “phobe”, “phobic”, we have “-fear”, “-fearer”, and “-fearing”. Arachnophobia, arachnophobe, arachnophobic: spiderfear, spiderfearer, spiderfearing.

Philias

The form –philia indicates (i) “a tendency towards”, such as in “haemophilia”, and (ii) “love of or liking for”, especially with a sense of “sexual interest in”.

Natural self-suggestions are “-love” and “-liking”. But these don’t quite do it for me. I think we need a more extreme word. We could use the intensive prefix “for-“, to make “forliking” or “forlove”. Or we could go down a simpler path and use a readymade word: hankering, yearning, lust.

Certainly in the second sense of –philia, I very much like “lust”. It can have both sexual and non-sexual connotations, just like –philia, whilst also indicating an element of strong, almost insatiable desire. Thus, we have “childlust” (paedophilia), “frenchlust” (francophilia), and “animallust” (bestiality).

In the first sense of the suffix –philia, that is, ‘an inclination towards X’, we could use various forms. For example, “haemophilia” is literally a sickness where one cannot stop bleeding. Thus, “bleedingsickness”. Other possibilities suggest themselves, such as “bleedsickness”, “forbleed(ing)sickness”, and “bleedishness”. I’m sure you can think of others besides.

Manias

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “mania” primarily as, “madness, particularly of a kind characterised by uncontrolled, excited, or aggressive behaviour”, and “a personal obsession … excessive enthusiasm … a collective enthusiasm, usually short-lived, a ‘craze’”. It also lists the specific psychological meaning referring to a particular aspect of bipolar mood disorder.

I believe that madness or mindsickness are good ways of translating the mental illness type of “mania”, whilst craze is a good way to treat the merely excessive though not quite mentally unsound type of “mania”. I think this because whilst “craze” doesn’t needfully express mental derangement, it can, whereas “mad” and “mindsick” needfully betoken a mental unsoundness. Alternatively, we could use craze for both, because it does, like “mania”, have a shade of aggressiveness and also treads the line between merely the excessive and mental illness.

Wordlist

So, for your delight and quick perusal, I have prepared a list of words set over into Anglish. Enjoy!

NOTE: I haven’t supplied a full list of derivatives (e.g. “acrophobe” and “acrophobic” alongside “acrophobia”), as I think the derived forms are obvious; I have, instead, listed the forms that I reckon will be most useful.

Acrophobia                         Heightsfear

Agoraphobia                      Openspacefear

Anglophile                          Englishluster

Anglophobe                       Englishfearer

Arachnophobia                 Spiderfear

Francophobe                     Frenchfearer

Homophobia                      Gayfear

Kleptomania                      Theftlust, Theftmadness

Necrophilia                         Deathlust (Note: “necrophilia” does not solely mean a sexual desire for corpses, as it is often taken to be, it also includes a non-sexual but psychologically disturbed fascination with them)

Nymphomania                  Sexlust, Sexmadness, Overlust

Paedophile                         Childluster

Paedophilia                        Childlust

Paedophilic                         Childlusting

Pyromania                          Firemadness, Firelust, Firecraziness

Xenophobia                       Outland(er)fear

Xenophobic                        Outland(er)fearing