Thursday, October 17, 2019

Coupling together compound words for the fears of Halloween pumpkins and candy corn


We can easily come up with Halloween-related fears that are too specific to have appeared in the Wikipedia List of Phobias or in the longer The Phobia List. Describing them requires new compound words. (On September 15, 2019 I had blogged about The joy of compound words).



























The web site FearOf.net has a page for Fear of Pumpkins Phobia – Cucurbitophobia which claims (without providing a number) that phobia is quite common. But Wikipedia says Curcubita are a genus including squashes, pumpkins, and gourds. FearOf.net has another page for Fear of Halloween Phobia – Samhainophobia. Fear of Halloween pumpkins therefore should be more specifically called samhainocucurbitophobia.


























CandySTORE.com called candy corn the worst Halloween candy. Lewis Black has a five-minute comedy routine about his disgust of candy corn. What should we call a fear of candy corn? The PhobiaWikia has a page for Caramelaphobia or karamelophobia - fear of candy and another page for Kalampokiphobia - fear of corn. Put them together and you get a specific term – karamelokalampokiphobia.

An image of a pumpkin came from Carol Highsmith at the Library of Congress. An image of candy corn came from Wikimedia Commons.

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