chelonaphobia

English

Etymology

From Ancient Greek χελώνη (khelṓnē) +‎ -phobia.

Noun

chelonaphobia (uncountable)

(rare) The fear of turtles (including tortoises).
- 2011, Ben Hatch, chapter 6, in Are We Nearly There Yet? A Family’s 8,000-Mile Car Journey Around Britain, Chichester, West Sussex: Summersdale Publishers Ltd, →ISBN, pages 52–53:
  An aquarium, however, is a dangerous place to fall out with your husband if you have chelonaphobia. My wife, I must tell you, is scared – not just scared, terrified more like – of all tortoises and all creatures that look like tortoises including turtles. […] Freelancing on travel technology stories in the study, her chelonaphobia isn’t an inconvenience, but seeing as though virtually every day on this trip we’re at some wildlife park, it’s become one.
- 2017, Bethany Blake, chapter 36, in Death by Chocolate Lab (Lucky Paws Petsitting Mystery), Waterville, Me.: Thorndike Press Large Print, Gale, →ISBN, page 227:
  I knew everything about Moxie, from her shoe size — six — to the fact that she suffered from chelonaphobia, or a fear of turtles. We’d discovered that together during a disastrous fifth-grade class trip to a small zoo called Reptiland.
- 2018, Peter Laufer, “Ninja Turtles Fuel Crisis”, in “The Prodigious Farms”, in Dreaming in Turtle: A Journey Through the Passion, Profit, and Peril of Our Most Coveted Prehistoric Creatures, New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, →ISBN, page 140:
  “Turtles are easy to love. They don’t attack you, so there’s not a fear of turtles.” Not for Yee, maybe, but chelonaphobia does exist—there are people who are afraid of turtles. Huffington Post news editor Ani Vrabel publically^[sic] confessed her fears back in 2013. “I’ve had terrible dreams about turtles flying at my face, chasing me with the intent of gumming me to death, and hiding in my bed,” she wrote in a turtle-terror memoir.
- 2023, John Laible, “February Year 869: Phobia”, in The Gnome, the Dwarf, and the Danger Tree (The Saga of Brip and Torvir; 1), →ISBN:
  (Danger Gnomes found random capitalization more fun and wondered why the other races avoided correspondence with them). Unfortunately, it was nailed above and partially over the volunteer sheet “tURtle bAiT nEedeD, sEriOUs vOLunTeeRs onLy; abSencE oF chELonaPHobiA is A pLuS!