Glassophobia

Which statement do you agree with?

A. The glass is half full.

B. The glass is half empty.

C. The glass scares me half to death.

If you answered C, then you may have glassophobia. It’s mostly a spelling error for the pseudo-technical term glossophobia. This month glassophobia has shown up both in the title for a YouTube video by T. J. Walker and in the body of a blog post by Leo Novsky. 

Claims that glossophobia is the medical term for fear of public speaking are basically bat crap. I looked it up in two comprehensive databases from the U.S. National Library of Medicine. It isn’t in PubMed at all, and appears just once in their full article text PubMed Central (PMC).

Happy Halloween!