My Five Very Specific Phobias That Need Naming

I HAVE A FEW FEARS THAT ARE SO ODDLY SPECIFIC THAT I EVENTUALLY DECIDED THEY DESERVED NAMES.

I'm not talking about the usual things like heights, spiders, or flying. These are much more mundane situations in which my brain has somehow managed to identify one very particular way things could go wrong, and then make me feel slightly queasy about it.

Since the names for these things don't already seem to exist, I started making up Greek ones.

To be clear, none of these are medical diagnoses. They're just names I've given to a handful of very specific fears I've experienced at various points in my life. And in two cases, there's a good reason for the fear: I've actually had the thing happen.

Cartoon of a nervous man carefully holding an egg in both hands in a kitchen, sweating and looking worried. A thought bubble shows the egg cracked open with its contents spilled on the counter.
The fear of dropping or crushing an egg. Apparently, eggs require the handling technique of a bomb disposal expert.

OVOFRAGILIPHOBIA

The first is the fear of dropping or crushing an egg while handling it.

Eggs are surprisingly difficult to hold in a way that feels completely secure. You don't want to grip one too tightly because, well, it's an egg, but you also can't hold it too loosely because the slightest bump can send it flying.

I've probably dropped close to a dozen eggs over my lifetime (as far as I can remember anyway), so my nervousness about them isn't entirely hypothetical. Whenever I'm carrying one, I'm conscious of the fact that I need to hold it gently while somehow holding it firmly enough that it doesn't end up on the floor.

It's a peculiar little balancing act: squeeze too hard and you have a mess in your hand; don't squeeze hard enough and you may have a mess on the floor.

I've decided to call that ovofragiliphobia, from ovum ("egg"), fragilis ("fragile"), and the Greek-derived -phobia ("fear").

Cartoon of a nervous man leaning over a balcony while holding a smartphone above the railing. A thought bubble shows the phone falling toward the city far below.
The fear of dropping your phone from a great height—even when you're perfectly safe yourself

TELEPHONOPTOPHOBIA

The second one is the strange feeling I get when I'm holding my phone over a balcony railing or some other substantial drop.

I'm not particularly bothered by the height itself. It's the phone that suddenly becomes the problem.

As long as I'm holding it on the safe side of the railing, everything is fine. But put it over the edge and I'm suddenly very aware that I'm holding an expensive piece of electronics several stories above the ground. I know I'm gripping it securely, yet I can almost feel the possibility of my fingers loosening and the phone slipping away.

The unpleasant part is that I don't even have to imagine myself falling. It's the phone falling that makes my stomach turn.

That is telephonoptophobia, built around telephon- ("telephone") and ptosis ("falling"), with -phobia for the fear itself. In other words, fear of the telephone falling.

It's an entirely imaginary disaster, but the physical sensation it produces can be surprisingly real.

Cartoon of a startled man nervously operating the zipper of his pants. A thought bubble shows the zipper closing on an exaggeratedly worried face, illustrating his fear of getting caught.
The fear of getting an important piece of anatomy caught in your zipper. Some risks simply aren't worth rushing.

KLEIOPEOSPHOBIA

Then there's the fear, for boys and men generally, of catching your private appendage in a zipper, particularly when you're zipping up too quickly.

There isn't much mystery behind this one. You start pulling the zipper upward and suddenly become aware that there is a fairly important piece of anatomy in the general vicinity. The natural response is to slow down and make sure everything is safely out of the way before continuing.

It's not really a fear of zippers themselves. It's the thought of what could happen if you get careless for half a second. Remember that scene in There's Something About Mary?

I've given that charming little concern the name kleiopeosphobia, combining Greek kleío ("to close" or "shut") with peos ("penis") and -phobia ("fear").

It may not be a condition recognized by modern medicine, but I'm pretty sure most men understand the underlying concept immediately.

Cartoon of a panicked man examining a loose dental appliance in his bathroom. A thought bubble shows the appliance being swallowed and traveling toward an exaggerated stomach.
The fear that a loose dental appliance might come loose completely—and somehow end up being swallowed

CHALODONTOKATAPINOPHOBIA

Another one concerns loose dental work, particularly the fear that a denture or dental cap might come loose and accidentally be swallowed.

Once something in your mouth starts feeling loose, it's hard not to become aware of it. You can feel it moving around, and then the possibility presents itself: what if it comes completely loose and I swallow it without realizing?

At that point, something that was previously just a minor annoyance becomes a small but surprisingly vivid disaster scenario.

I call this chalodontokatapinophobia, combining chaláo ("loosen" or "release"), odonto- ("tooth"), and katapíno ("to swallow"), followed by -phobia. It's an unnecessarily elaborate way of saying, "What if my loose dental appliance comes off and I swallow it?"

The name is considerably more intimidating than the fear itself.

Cartoon of a terrified man frantically swatting at a flying wasp near his ear. A thought bubble shows the wasp inside his ear, illustrating the imagined mishap.
The fear of accidentally swatting an insect into your own ear. Yes, this one actually happened.

ENTOMOPLESSOTOPHOBIA

The last one has a rather better story behind it, because this one actually happened too.

When I was around eleven or twelve, I was asleep when a wasp somehow ended up on my earlobe. In my half-asleep attempt to get it away from me, I accidentally swatted it off my earlobe and into my ear.

Not toward my ear.

Into my ear.

I had to have it extracted by a physician very early that morning, which is probably enough to explain why the possibility has stuck with me.

Poor thing, it died there. In a strange way, the last thing it heard was the very thing I still fear.

The fear isn't simply that an insect might get into my ear. It's the much more specific thought that, while trying to swat an insect away, I might accidentally send it in there myself. Once you've actually managed to do that as a kid, it's not difficult to imagine becoming a little more cautious the next time an insect gets anywhere near your ear.

So naturally, I gave it a Greek name: entomoplessotophobia, from éntomon ("insect") and plesso ("to strike" or "hit"), followed by -phobia.

It sounds considerably more respectable than "I'm afraid I'll swat a bug into my ear."

A PERSONAL COLLECTION OF COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY PHOBIAS

So there they are: ovofragiliphobia, telephonoptophobia, kleiopeosphobia, chalodontokatapinophobia, and entomoplessotophobia.

Two of these fears have some fairly solid supporting evidence. I've dropped plenty of eggs, and I have personally demonstrated that it is possible to swat a wasp into your own ear.

The other three are more interesting because, so far, I've managed to avoid the mishaps I'm afraid of. My phone hasn't fallen from a balcony, I've never caught myself in a zipper, and I haven't accidentally swallowed a dental appliance. Yet the possibility alone is apparently enough for my brain to produce the appropriate little warning signal.

Maybe that's what makes these things interesting. The brain doesn't always distinguish between a genuine memory of something going wrong and a vividly imagined version of something going wrong. Sometimes all it needs is a plausible scenario and a few seconds to think about it.

In my case, that has resulted in a small personal dictionary of fears that probably didn't need names in the first place.

But now they have them.