Weekly English Words with Alisha Common Phobias
Welcome back to Weekly Words. Welcome back to Weekly Words. My name is Alisha, and this
week I’m told we’re gonna do a thing that
is a little different. Alright. Let’s, let’s
start. Common phobias is the theme for this week. Uh, “phobias” means “fears.”
Let’s go.
The first word is “acrophobia,” a fear
of heights. Uh, if you don’t like going
up into tall buildings, for example, you can
say, “I have acrophobia.” I don’t like
going into skyscrapers. You don’t like to
see things far below you. Uh, yeah.
The next word is “arachnophobia.” “Arachnophobia” means a fear of spiders. You might have seen
a movie called “Arachnophobia,” that had
a lot of spiders in it, as you might be able
to guess. In a sentence you could say, “Ew, will you please kill that spider for me? I
don’t want to go near it. I have arachnophobia.” K.
The next word is “claustrophobia.” “Claustrophobia is a fear of small spaces. So, if for whatever
reason, you find yourself in a cramped train, for example, you feel really uncomfortable
and you want to get off the train. That’s
called “claustrophobia.” In a sentence,
you might say, “Ooh, I don’t want to take
the rush hour subway. I have claustrophobia,
and the commute makes me really, really nervous.”
Next is “agoraphobia.” “Agoraphobia”
means, um, “a fear of going outside.”
Someone who prefers to just stay inside, to stay at home more often than not might be
agoraphobic. “My cousin has agoraphobia, and he refuses to leave the house no matter
what we say or what we do.”
Keep in mind that some of these words, um, are not commonly used in conversations, ah,
but rather, what they represent is fairly
common, like fear of heights, and so on. The
fears might be very common, but the words themselves are not.
Oh my! “Ophidiophobia.” “Ophidiophobia”
is a fear of snakes. I have ophidiophobia,
to an extent. I did go hiking once. I was
hiking, and I was actually near a Buddhist
temple at the time. It was in the middle of
a forest. They were doing a ritual of some
kind. You could hear like “a-eh-ooh-ra”
like in the forest. And then as I was walking
up the hill, suddenly there’s this snake,
like I saw it at the same time that it saw
me. The snake was like, “Oh my god, a human!” And I screamed an expletive. I said, “Oh,
a snake!” And it echoed through the forest. And I was like, “Oh my god, did the Buddhist
monks just hear me?” In a sentence, uh,
“I was on a hike and I saw a snake and I
screamed because I have ophidiophobia and they terrify me.”
Onward. End! That’s the end. So maybe, um, these were some pretty common phobias I think.
If you can’t remember the specific word
for your phobia or your fear, don’t worry
about it. You can just say “fear of heights,” “fear of spiders,” and so on. But if you
want to sound really smart, you can try to
remember these and use them in your conversation
the next time you want to talk about your
fear. Thanks very much for joining us for
Weekly Words again this week. We’ll see
you again next time for more fun information.
See you!