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Showing posts with label triskaidekaphobia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label triskaidekaphobia. Show all posts

Friday, June 13, 2014

Library Word of the Week

Since today is Friday the 13th, I thought I would try to find a good word related to superstition and fear. A word I really like is: 


Triskaidekaphobia 
(from Greek tris meaning "3", kai meaning "and", deka meaning "10" and phobos meaning "fear" or "morbid fear") is fear of the number 13 and avoidance to use it; it is a superstition and related to a specific fear of Friday the 13th, called paraskevidekatriaphobia (from Παρασκευή Paraskevi, Greek for Friday) or friggatriskaidekaphobia (after Frigg, the Norse goddess Friday is named after in English). (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triskaidekaphobia


This means that if you see a word with "phobia" on a test, you know right away that it is a fear of something. For example: Ailurophobia is a fear of cats and Cynophobia is a fear of dogs. I'm a big Doctor Who fan (BBC TV show), so I like the word Anachrophobiawhich is a fear of temporal displacement. That word was made up recently by an author (after all, Shakespeare made up words too), but it likely comes from "anachronism" mixed with "phobia."


Anachronism: something (such as a word, an object, or an event) that is mistakenly placed in a time where it does not belong in a story, movie, etc.: a person or a thing that seems to belong to the past and not to fit in the present

If you're a fan of Steampunk novels, you might already know "anachronism." Anachronism comes from Greek, with "chronos" meaning "time."

While I started with Friday the 13th, we found ourselves in Ancient Greece with time. I suppose the Ancient Greeks could have been pretty superstitious too.