Last week I talked about fear.  Most of us are afraid of something, but it differs greatly from person to person.  Personally I’m afraid of wasps.

Rational fear is fear that has a solid reason behind it, for instance, fear of fire, or drowning.  Irrational fear is fear that doesn’t have any real reason for the feelings.  For instance fear of butterflies, or frogs . .  .or ghosts.

When fear gets too strong and begins to take over our lives, we call it a phobia (恐怖症）.

Most people have heard of the well known phobias, such as:

Claustrophobia- Fear of confined spaces.

Acrophobia- Fear of heights.

But there are so many more phobias that some people suffer from that we’ve never heard of.  Of course there is a word for everything in English, so I’m going to give you a selection from the long list of phobias that I’ve found.  I’ll give you one for every letter of the alphabet, 26 phobias.  This is from a list of HUNDREDS!!!.  Click here if you want to see more.  So here we go, phobias from A to Z.

Arachnophobia- Fear of spiders

Bibliophobia- Fear of books.

Chionophobia- Fear of snow.

Dentophobia- Fear of dentists.

Enetophobia- Fear of pins.

Felinophobia- Fear of cats.

Genuphobia- Fear of knees.

Hominophobia- Fear of men.

Ichthyophobia- Fear of fish.

Japanophobia- Fear of Japanese.

Katsaridaphobia- Fear of cockroaches.

Lachanophobia- Fear of vegetables.

Mageirocophobia- Fear of cooking.

Nudophobia- Fear of nudity.

Obesophobia- Fear of gaining weight.

Pyrophobia- Fear of fire.

Quintaphobia- fear of the number five.

Ranidaphobia- Fear of frogs.

Stigiophobia- Fear of hell.

Triskaidekaphobia- Fear of the number 13.

Uranophobia – Fear of heaven.

Verbophobia- Fear of words.

Wiccaphobia: Fear of witches.

Xenoglossophobia- Fear of foreign languages.

Y- Sorry, I can’t find a phobia for Y.  If I do, I’ll add it here later.

Zoophobia- Fear of animals.

Next week, SCARY STORIES!