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xenophobia: msg#00013

culture.language.word-of-the-day

Subject: xenophobia

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The Word of the Day for August 14 is:

xenophobia \zen-uh-FOH-bee-uh\ noun
: fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything
that is strange or foreign

Example sentence:
I always thought it was odd that Gene, whose xenophobia
precluded travel beyond the state border, chose to become a
travel agent.

Did you know?
If you look back to the ancient Greek terms that underlie
the word "xenophobia," you'll discover that xenophobic
individuals are literally "stranger fearing." "Xenophobia," that
elegant-sounding name for an aversion to persons unfamiliar,
ultimately derives from two Greek terms: "xenos," which can be
translated as either "stranger" or "guest," and "phobos," which
means either "fear" or "flight." "Phobos" is the ultimate source
of all English "-phobia" terms, but many of those were actually
coined in English or New Latin using the combining form "-
phobia" (which traces back to "phobos"). "Xenophobia" itself
came to us by way of New Latin and first appeared in print in
English in 1903.







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