Xenophobia

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.