Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Homophobia
/ˌhoʊməˈfoʊbiə/noun
Hostility or prejudice towards gay people.
The Greek roots
ὁμός
homós
same
φόβος
phóbos
fear, dread
Literally: “fear of the same”
The story of the word
The homo- is Greek ὁμός, same, not Latin homo, man. It arrives by way of homosexual, a hybrid word built in 1869 by the Hungarian campaigner Károly Mária Kertbeny, and the stubborn mispronunciation with a long o comes from readers assuming Latin. George Weinberg gave homophobia its currency around 1969, and the φόβος in it works rhetorically rather than clinically: the word names hostility, not a diagnosable fear.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1969
Same family
homogeneoushomonymhomologousxenophobia
In a sentence
The report traced most of the complaints to homophobia among a handful of supervisors.