Talk:nyctophilia

RFV discussion: January–June 2014

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nyctophilia

I can find only one use of this word (in quotation marks), all other uses of this capitalization are mentions. I suggest replacing the entry with {{only in|Appendix:English dictionary-only terms}}. The capitalized Nyctophilia is an attested scientific name for something that has a dissectable brain (so, not a plant), possibly the members of the genus Nyctophilus. - -sche (discuss) 22:36, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't think that is right. Nyctophilia does indeed refer to the genus Nyctophilus, but that is a genus of bats. I cannot imagine that the name comes from anything other than their nocturnal lifestyle and nothing to do with their brains. I'm not sure I really understand the comment; what manner of creature has a brain that is not dissectable? SpinningSpark 16:56, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

I think he was using "dissectable brain" tautologically, to indicate he found the term mostly in association with discussions of brain dissection, not to imply a distinction with an undissectable brain. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:38, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Right. - -sche (discuss) 23:40, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

It gets a mention in Mosby's Medical Dictionary. While that is still only a mention, I would give it more credence that the average "-phile" or "-phobe" word list since it is aimed at the healthcare profession and published by a well known scientific publisher. SpinningSpark 18:33, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

It is not too much to suggest that he experiences "nyctophilia, " defined by Bertram Lewin as "an erotic pleasure in darkness, which enters as a wish-fulfillment element on fantasies of being in the 'womb,' or more properly, as the German word Mutterlieb suggests, of being in the mother's body". [1]

The above is the only cite that I can find, and even that is not very satisfactory. SpinningSpark 19:10, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

I found a mention of the "nyctophilic behavior of rodents" in this patent application, which corroborates the definition, but little other use except in reference to the genus of bats. D4g0thur (talk) 05:36, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

RFV-failed. - -sche (discuss) 23:40, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

I was just revisiting this. (The text in the deletion history made me laugh.) Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for the bat genus Nyctophilia so I imagine it's obsolete...? Equinox ◑ 16:50, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

I assume it's an obsolete name/form of Nyctophilus. It's also a startlingly common scanno for Nyctophilus, though, so it's hard to be sure it actually exists: I looked at a dozen books which Google Books' OCR says contain it but they all actually contain Nyctophilus. I did find two cites of the common noun just now: Citations:nyctophilia. - -sche (discuss) 21:10, 10 March 2021 (UTC)