Momophobia is the fear of speaking off the cuff (impromptu speaking)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an interesting little book from 2021 by John Koenig titled The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. One of them is momophobia, which he defines as:

 

“the fear of speaking off the cuff or from the heart; the terror of saying the wrong thing and having to watch someone’s smile fade as they realize you’re not who they thought you were.

 

Ancient Greek μῶμος (momos), blemish, disgrace + -φοβία (-phobía), fear. Momus was the Ancient Greek god of mockery and harsh criticism. Pronounced 'moh-muh-foh-bee-uh.' ”

 

As shown above (via a Venn diagram), this twenty-first-century fear is a subset of a twentieth-century fear - glossophobia. There are six other fears in the book with a -phobia suffix (nouns listed in alphabetical order):

 

antiophobia - page 116

a fear you sometimes experience while leaving a loved one, wondering if this will turn out to be the last time you’ll ever see them, and whatever slapdash good-bye you toss their way might have to serve as your final farewell.

 

apomakrymenophobia - page 91

fear that your connections with people are ultimately shallow, that although your relationships feel congenial at the time, an audit of your life would produce an emotional safety deposit box of low-interest holdings and uninvested windfall profits, which will indicate you were never really at risk of joy, sacrifice or loss.

 

fygophobia - page 145

the fear that your connections with people will keep dwindling as you get older; that one by one, you’ll all go flying off the merry-go-round in wildly different directions, sailing through various classes and jobs and interests, ultimately landing in far-flung neighborhoods where you’ll hunker down with your families plus a handful of confidants you see a few times a year, perpetually reassuring each other, “We should keep in touch.”

 

koinophobia - page 49

The fear that you’ve lived an ordinary life.

 

nachlophobia - page 91

the fear that your deepest connections with people are ultimately pretty shallow, that although your relationships feel congenial in the moment, an audit of your life would reveal a smattering of low-interest holdings and uninvested windfall profits, which will indicate you were never really at risk of joy, sacrifice, or loss.

 

The description for this fear closely resembles the description for apomakrymenophobia.  

 

nodrophobia - page 241

the fear of irrevocable actions and irreversible processes—knowing that a colorful shirt will fade a little more with every wash, that your tooth enamel is wearing away molecule by molecule, never to grow back.

 

The word momophobia seems to first have appeared in a 2005 magazine article by Elaine Roth in the Quarterly Review of Film and Video (Volume 22, issue 2) titled Momophobia: Incapacitated Mothers and Their Adult Children in 1990s Films.