☼ Concept Map

''hydrophobia'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

↩ 🔳 🔳 🔳

Primary

⁀➴

''hydrophobia'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260227164232-00-⌔

hydrophobia - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

hydrophobia (countable and uncountable, plural hydrophobias)

  • (pathology) An aversion to water, as a symptom of rabies; the disease of rabies itself.
    • ✤ Synonym: waterfright
    • ✤ […] Cato, who ſcorned both death and fortune, could not abide the ſight of a looking glaſſe or of water; overcome with horrour, and quelled with amazement, if by the contagion of a mad dog he had falne into that ſickneſſe which Phiſitians call Hydroforbia, or feare of waters.1
    • ✤ Now that I have breathed a little, I am anxious to know your opinion of the nature of that affection in the throat, which deprives a patient of the power of ſwallowing in conſequence of hydrophobia.2
    • ✤ I myself knew a boy whose face was licked by a dog that was going mad, and who died of hydrophobia.3
    • ✤ * Hydrophobia may, without risk, be applied to the disease in mankind, and serve to distinguish it; but it would be most injudicious to retain it as a designation for the madness or rabies of the lower animals. […] “Hydrophobia” is not even a proper designation for the malady in him[man], inasmuch as authors have described a spontaneous hydrophobia in the human species, or certain symptoms resembling those of hydrophobia, which certainly were not the same as those produced by the bite of a rabid animal, neither was the presence of a transmissible virus proved to exist.*4
    • ✤ The Christian philosophy nominally attributes all natural evils, including sickness and death, to sin. But it has lost the connecting link between the moral disorders and the physical disorders which afflict us. […] It cannot understand […] how there are cancers and plagues and hydrophobias of the soul, the secret causes of those horrible diseases in the body.5
    • ✤ A young man, 24 years of age, employed as a clerk in a dry goods store, was bitten on a Saturday morning bu a watchdog belonging to the proprietor. […] [H]e stated that he had been reading about rabies and the symptoms which would develop in man from the bite of a rabid dog, and insisted that he was developing hydrophobia as a result of having been bitten by the watchdog. […] Two days later the young man was in a very hysterical state and kept insisting that the dog that bit him was rabid. […] Here was a typical case of lyssophobia or pseudo-rabies, a figment of an overworked imagination, […]6
    • ✤ Thus not only should be diluted and dynamised the “known” morbid agents (as for example Scabby of Sheeps, Tinea of animals, itch (psora) of man, the blood of the spleen of animals suffering from Anthrax, pus of syphilis, serum taken out of vesicles of Marochetti in hydrophobias, lympth of Anthrax and of plague even of the contagion of cholera) but also all sorts of products from secretions and excretions of men and of animals […]7
  • (psychology, colloquial) A morbid fear of water; aquaphobia.
    • ✤ Synonyms: aquaphobia, waterfright
    • ✤ [page 39] HydroPhobias begin on land long before casting off. But once at sea, fear is quickly lost in the joys and pleasures of the passage. […] [page 40] There are three HydroPhobias. The Big Three. Two of the Big Three are fears that prevent landlubbers from becoming sailors. The third is primal and common to all mankind. The Big Three are 1) Fear of Flatland, 2) Fear of Being with Self, and 3) The Fear of Bogeymen.]8
  • (chemistry) A lack of affinity for water; the quality of being hydrophobic
    • ✤ Synonym: water fear
    • ✤ Antonyms: hydrophilia, hygroscopy

Etymology

From Middle English idroforbia (“hydrophobia”), from Latin hydrophobia,9 from Ancient Greek ὑδροφοβία (hudrophobía),10 from ὑδρο- (hudro-), combining form of ῠ̔́δωρ (hŭ́dōr, “water”), + φοβία (phobía, “phobia”). The word is analysable as hydro- +‎ -phobia.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˌhaɪ.dɹə(ʊ)ˈfəʊ.bi.ə/
  • (General American) IPA: /ˌhaɪ.dɹəˈfoʊ.bi.ə/
  • (Australian) IPA: /ˌhɑe.dɹəˈfəʉ.bi.ə/
    • Audio (Australian): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -əʊbiə
  • Hyphenation: hy‧dro‧phob‧ia

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1603, Michel de Montaigne, “An Apologie of Raymond Sebond”, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC, page 319: ↩

  2. 1796 April, “Art. 27. Dialogues between a Pupil of the Late John Hunter and Jesse Foot, including Passages in Darwin ’s Zoonomia. 8vo. pp. 102. 3s. sewed. Becket. 1795. [book review]”, in The Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal, Enlarged, volume XIX, London: Printed for R[alph] Griffiths; and sold by T[homas] Becket, […], →OCLC, page 451: ↩

  3. 1851, Samuel Hahnemann; R. E. Dudgeon, compiler and transl., “The Bite of Mad Dogs”, in The Lesser Writings of Samuel Hahnemann: Collected and Translated, London: W. Headland, […], →OCLC, page 198: ↩

  4. 1872, George Fleming, “Introduction”, in Rabies and Hydrophobia: Their History, Nature, Causes, Symptoms, and Prevention, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, pages 5–6: ↩

  5. 1875, William H[enry] Holcombe, “Why Did They Die?”, in Our Children in Heaven, new edition, Philadelphia, Pa.: J. B. Lippincott & Co., →OCLC, page 286: ↩

  6. 1911 May 12, John R[obbins] Mohler, “Differential Diagnosis”, in Rabies or Hydrophobia (U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmers’ Bulletin; 449), Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, →OCLC, pages 14–15: ↩

  7. 1985, Marc Haffen, “History of Isopathy”, in O. A. Julian, translated by Rajkumar Mukherji, Julian’s Materia Medica of Nosodes with Repertory: […] Translated from the Original French, 2nd revised Indian edition, New Delhi: Published by Kuldeep Jain for B. Jain Publishers, published 2005, →ISBN, page 34: ↩

  8. [1998, Reese Palley, “HydroPhobias”, in Unlikely Passages, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Sheridan House, published 2002, →ISBN, pages 39 and 40: ↩

  9. “idroforbia, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 13 November 2018. ↩

  10. “hydrophobia”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022. ↩

Link to original

Secondary

• • •