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Oct 9, 2017
This week’s theme
There’s a word for it

This week’s words
acarophobia
exclosure
untrack
mise en abyme
zetetic

Squash Fear, Not Spiders!
Squash Fear, Not Spiders!

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

Where there’s an itch, there’s a scratch. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Where there’s a word-gap, there’s a word coiner.

Sure, you can use a phrase or a sentence to describe something, but why? Instead, why not come up with a single word for it! That’s how a language grows. Also, if you need this word, chances are someone else does too. So coin away, pollinate the world with your words, and see them bloom.

What words have you coined? Share them below or email us at words@wordsmith.org. Don’t forget to google first to make sure someone else hasn’t thought of it earlier.

Meanwhile enjoy this week’s words that might make you say: I didn’t know there was a word for it.

acarophobia

PRONUNCIATION:
(ak-uh-ruh-FOE-bee-uh)

MEANING:
noun:
1. An extreme fear of small insects.
2. A delusion that one’s skin is infested with bugs.
3. A fear of itching.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Greek acarus (mite) + -phobia (fear). Ultimately from the Indo-European root sker- (to cut), which is also the source of words such as skirt, sharp, scrape, screw, shard, shears, carnage, curt, carnivorous, excoriate, scrobiculate, hardscrabble, and incarnadine.

USAGE:
“She was proud of her illustration of thirty phobias; from acarophobia, fear of itchy, crawly insects, to selachophobia, fear of sharks.”
Rosalind Noonan; And Then She Was Gone; Kensington Books; 2014.

See more usage examples of acarophobia in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Imagine there's no countries, / It isn't hard to do. / Nothing to kill or die for, / And no religion, too. / Imagine all the people / Living life in peace. -John Lennon, musician (9 Oct 1940-1980)

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