Word of the Day: pogonophobia, meaning "fear of beards". It was used a month ago in the Economist ("Tajikistan: War of the beards" [1]). Last year it appeared in a Guardian article ("I am guilty of facial hair profiling" [2]).

"Pogono" is Greek for "beard". Perhaps "pogonophobia" is not entirely a joke coinage, though much of its usage seems to be for humor. Three decades ago, while helping to babysit one of my wife's nephews, whenever the little tyke caught sight of my shaggy mug instant wailing ensued. On the other hand, current web citations involving "pogonophobia" are mainly by dumb commercial "we treat any phobia" sites that clearly are using global search-and-replace to make generic form-letter prose for a variety of fears. What a waste of bits.

(cf. Exotic Artifacts (2010-05-19) re Tsarist Russian beard tokens, ...) - ^z - 2011-08-02