Theseus
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This is the latest phobia to grip the USA & the U.K. Even though the word goes back to the eighties & the nineties, there has broken out a plague of people dressed up as clowns & carrying knives. "The etymology of coulrophobia (morbid fear of clowns) by 2001 a popular term, not from psychology, possibly facetious, though the phenomenon is real enough is said to be built from Greek kolon "limb," with some supposed sense of "stilt-walker," hence "clown" + -phobia.
Ancient Greek words for "clown" were sklêro-paiktês, from paizein "to play (like a child);" or deikeliktas. Greek also had geloiastes "a jester, buffoon" (from gelao "to laugh, be merry"); there was a khleuastes "jester," but it had more of a sense of "scoffer, mocker," from khleuazo "treat with insolence." Other classical words used for theatrical clowns were related to "rustic," "peasant" (compare Latin fossor "clown," literally "labourer, digger," related to fossil).
Coulrophobia looks suspiciously like the sort of thing idle pseudo-intellectuals invent on the internet and which every smarty-pants takes up thereafter; perhaps it is a mangling of Modern Greek klooun "clown," which is the English word borrowed into Greek." (Online Etymological Dictionary).
I know that in Greek the same word is used, δηλ. κουλροφοβία, but can fellow lexilogists coin a better term?
Here is an article from TA NEA on this stupid & dangerous craze. Where I live, several incidents have broken out where young children have been chased to school by a knife wielding pseudo-clown:-
http://www.tanea.gr/news/world/arti...pollaplasiazontai-oso-plhsiazei-to-xalogoyin/.
Perhaps 'scleropaictophobia/ deicelictophobia.' (?!).
Ancient Greek words for "clown" were sklêro-paiktês, from paizein "to play (like a child);" or deikeliktas. Greek also had geloiastes "a jester, buffoon" (from gelao "to laugh, be merry"); there was a khleuastes "jester," but it had more of a sense of "scoffer, mocker," from khleuazo "treat with insolence." Other classical words used for theatrical clowns were related to "rustic," "peasant" (compare Latin fossor "clown," literally "labourer, digger," related to fossil).
Coulrophobia looks suspiciously like the sort of thing idle pseudo-intellectuals invent on the internet and which every smarty-pants takes up thereafter; perhaps it is a mangling of Modern Greek klooun "clown," which is the English word borrowed into Greek." (Online Etymological Dictionary).
I know that in Greek the same word is used, δηλ. κουλροφοβία, but can fellow lexilogists coin a better term?
Here is an article from TA NEA on this stupid & dangerous craze. Where I live, several incidents have broken out where young children have been chased to school by a knife wielding pseudo-clown:-
http://www.tanea.gr/news/world/arti...pollaplasiazontai-oso-plhsiazei-to-xalogoyin/.
Perhaps 'scleropaictophobia/ deicelictophobia.' (?!).
