Abibliophobia • Noun
Pronunciation: uh-bib-li-uh-fo-bee-yuh
Abibliophobia is the fear of running out of reading material.
Since you do not have to worry about this problem so long as you are reading this book, let's examine this joke of a word more closely. That abibliophobia is a joke does not preclude it from the English vocabulary; the English vocabulary is full of jokes, jokes that make this work possible. Abibliophobia is correctly constructed, so if you wish to use it, you will not be breaking any rules of English grammar. This word has derivational relatives: those suffering from abibliophobia are abibliophobes who are abibliophobic and behave abibliophobically (the adverb).
The easiest scientific words to construct out of the blue are those with the Greek root -phobia. Just look up the Greek word for whatever you are afraid of, replace the ending with -o, and couple the results with -phobia: "Rita Book suffers from such abibliophobia that she almost lives in the library." Rita's twin sister, Rhoda, claims that she began writing novels as a result of suffering from acute abibliophobia.
This amusing vocabulary item is composed of the Greek prefix a- "not" + bibli-(on) "book" + o + phob(os) "fear" + ia, a nominal suffix. Biblion originally referred to a small book or even a scroll. The word for Bible in most European languages comes from the plural of this word, biblia "books;" in other words, the original meaning was "The Books," referring to the various manuscripts that were combined to form the Bible.
