-phobia
/-ˈfəʊ.bi.ə/
"phobia" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“-phobia” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a suffix. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Used to form nouns meaning fear of a specific thing.
Corpus desk
Index EN-phobia · -phobia · English
-phobia · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "-" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | -phobia |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Suffix |
| IPA | /-ˈfəʊ.bi.ə/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “-phobia” in English
Rare enough to double-check
-phobia is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as asuffix, transcribed /-ˈfəʊ.bi.ə/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
-phobia has no tracked misspelling variants, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From New Latin, from Latin, from Ancient Greek -φοβία (-phobía), from φόβος (phóbos, “fear”). The correct English form is -phobia, spelled --P-H-O-B-I-A.
Definition
- 1Used to form nouns meaning fear of a specific thing.
- 2Used to form nouns meaning hate, dislike, or repression of a specific thing.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how -phobia appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
e.g. claustrophobia
e.g. homophobia, xenophobia, chemophobia
Etymology
From New Latin, from Latin, from Ancient Greek -φοβία (-phobía), from φόβος (phóbos, “fear”).
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.