Learn English – How did phobia ever come to mean hatred

etymologygreekmeaningsemantic-shiftsuffixes

I understand the word 'phobia' to mean an irrational fear of something, tracing its roots to the Greek word ῾φοβια᾽ associated with flight, dread, or terror.

How then did this word ever come to embody 'dislike' or 'hatred', as in the word homophobia (I'm struggling to think of others… perhaps this says something)?

I see that the word aversion seems to have similar issues, a word originally meaning to avert or avoid now somehow connoting a strong distaste or antipathy towards something…

Thoughts?

Best Answer

Phobia: (Etymonline):

  • "irrational fear, horror, aversion," 1786, perhaps on model of similar use in French, abstracted from compounds in -phobia, from Greek -phobia, from phobos "fear, panic fear, terror, outward show of fear; object of fear or terror," originally "flight" (still the only sense in Homer), but it became the common word for "fear" via the notion of "panic, fright"

I think that the meaning of fear and panic are naturally associated with something you dislike or hate, from which probably the association of phobia with hatred.

Homophobia is defined as:

  • dislike of or prejudice against homosexual people . (ODO )

  • irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality (M-W) )

  • fear, hatred, or mistrust of lesbians and gay men.(AHD )

From www.quora.com

  • The word as coined did refer to a fear, specifically a fear of being near homosexuals or being thought homosexual. The psychologist who coined it, George Weinberg, believed that hatred of homosexuals stemmed primarily from that literal fear. Thus, regardless of the accuracy of Weinberg's thesis, homophobia became shorthand for hatred of homosexuals

  • (Weinberg's book, Society and the Healthy Homosexual)

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