Home » Kids Want to Know » A Word for the Fear of School

A Word for the Fear of School

Sloane, a 12-year-old from Omaha, Nebraska, is a bit anxious about starting middle school in the fall and wonders if there’s a single word that means “fear of middle school.” There are some long, rare words for the extreme fear of school in general, such as didaskaleinophobia and scholionophobia, or also spelled scolionophobia. More generally, there’s neophobia, meaning “fear of the new” or agnostophobia, “fear of the unknown.” This is part of a complete episode.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

More from this show

What Makes A Great Book Opening Line?

What makes a great first line of a book? How do the best authors put together an initial sentence that draws you in and makes you want to read more? We’re talking about the openings of such novels as George Orwell’s 1984...

Slip Someone a Mickey

To slip someone a mickey means to doctor a drink and give it to an unwitting recipient. The phrase goes back to Mickey Finn of the Lone Star Saloon in Chicago, who in the late 19th century was notorious for drugging certain customers and relieving...