the.com/xenophobia
Fear of the foreign that somehow never fears foreign food, music, or money.
means An intense dislike or fear of people, customs, or things perceived as foreign or strange.
from Built from Greek xenos ('stranger, foreigner, guest') and phobos ('fear, panic') — the same xenos that gives us 'xenon' and the same phobos that lent his name to every other phobia. The word entered English use in the late 1800s, as nationalism sharpened the line between 'us' and 'them,' and the Greeks' own word for a 'guest-stranger' got repurposed into a diagnosis for people who'd rather no stranger come to dinner.
- literal roots
- Greek for stranger plus fear
- irony alert
- coined by cosmopolitan Victorians, not villagers
- not a phobia
- clinically a prejudice, not an anxiety disorder
- selective logic
- loves foreign cuisine, hates foreign cooks