Who popularized the word glossophobia? What is a better Plain English alternative?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To me, the twentieth-century compound word glossophobia (for public speaking fear) is a pseudo-technical term intended to impress rather than inform. In Greek the phobia suffix just means a fear, but in English phobia has a different narrower meaning for psychologists.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I discussed previously, a phobia has three additional criteria shown above via a Venn diagram from a blog post on December 8, 2019 titled Toastmasters press release confuses a fear of public speaking with a social phobia. The more severe form might better be termed either public speaking phobia or public speaking anxiety disorder.

 

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines glossophobia just as fear of public speaking. It says the first known use was in 1964.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As shown above, the Ngram Viewer at Google Books shows use of the word only taking off after 1970. My searches in Google books found references to it as just a fear of speaking. The first was in the 1931 book by Lee Edward Travis titled Speech Pathology: A Dynamic Neurological Treatment of Normal Speech and Speech Deviations. It says:

 

“Lalophobia – Morbid or extreme dislike of speaking. Synonym: glossophobia”

 

The second Google Books reference was to a 1947 book by S. Stephenson Smith titled How to Double Your Vocabulary. Chapter VI on page 89 is titled 100 Will Get You 5000. It has glossophobia defined as fear of speaking - in a list of twenty phobias taken from the Psychoanalyst’s Repertory. A second edition of that book appeared in 1964, so maybe Smith should get the blame for popularizing glossophobia. And perhaps it is where Merriam-Webster found the word.    

 

An article by Barbara Kendall at EscorpionAtl titled What can trigger glossophobia? says that term was first used by Alexander Luria (a Soviet neuropsychologist) in 1941 to describe the fear of speaking in public.

 

Stage fright is a broader Plain English term for performance anxiety. Sarah Solovitch has an article at Salon on June 21, 2015 titled “Stage fright”: Mark Twain coined the term and gave Tom Sawyer a bad case of it. That phrase came from his 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

 

 A narrower term, speech fright, first appeared in an article at the British Medical Journal on June 5, 1909. It pops up occasionally, but never has really caught on as a Plain English description for the fear of public speaking.  

 

The image was adapted from a March 5, 1913 Puck magazine page at the Library of Congress.