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Your ironic term of the day

I swear I was trying to find out what a fear of being photographed is called, when I came upon this little gem. Please tell me that in this one instance “pg” is not pronounced as a “f”.

Phagophobia is a psychogenic dysphagia, a fear of swallowing.[1] It is expressed in various swallowing complaints without any apparent physical reason detectable by physical inspection and laboratory analyses. An obsolete term for this phobia is choking phobia,[2] but it was suggested that the latter term is confusing and it is necessary to distinguish the fear of swallowing (i.e., of the propulsion of bolus) from fear of choking.[1]

9 thoughts on “Your ironic term of the day

  1. Wait, PHAG-ophobia is the fear of SWALLOWING? Or CHOKING?

    In the immortal words of Arte Johnson…verrrry interesting.

  2. I know, right Joe? It’s almost as if I wanted to fellate the entire staff at Wiki, or, as if just by accident, as I stated earlier, I came upon Phagophobia and had a fear of choking on the good stories as a blogger.

  3. Joe, it’s “ghey” not “gay.”

    “Gay” is so last millenium.

    Oh, and “phago” is a prefix derived from the Greek word “to eat.” Imagine that. Something Greek and ghey. Who’d have guessed?

  4. Some of us read “phagophobia” and think of the common shorthand for bacteriophages. Of course, some of us are also nerdier than we like to admit. *cough*
    *proceeds to look into etymological links*
    Okay, a lot nerdier.

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