I wouldn't call myself a superstitious person by any stretch of the imagination, but for some reason I do have an in-built suspicion towards the number '7'. Weirder still is that apparently my grandfather felt the same way - there must be pretty long odds on that, seeing as how it's generally considered a 'lucky' number. You'll notice that this is the seventh entry in my Word of the Week feature, so it's numerical phobias (not phobiae, sadly) in the spotlight this time. And just to make this seventh entry a lucky one for everyone who follows the feature, there are several words to learn this week. If you can get the right conversation going, you should be able to fit all of these in...
Noun: Fear of the number 'thirteen'. Pronounced as written, comes from the Greek tris (three) kai (and) deca (ten) phobia (fear). Fear of Friday the 13th - the date, not the movie - is paraskevidekatriaphobia.
Tetraphobia
Noun: Fear of the number 'four'. Common in Asian countries, due to the Mandarin pronounciation of the number being very close to that of the word for death.
Arithmophobia
Noun: A fear of numbers, either individually or a a whole.
Note: No matter how hard I search, an 'official' word for the fear of number seven remains elusive. Which was pretty unlucky, when it came to compiling this feature...
OTHER ARTICLES YOU MAY ENJOY
