rodentophobia

English

Etymology

From rodent +‎ -o- +‎ -phobia.

Noun

rodentophobia (uncountable)

1. (rare) The fear of rodents.

   Meronym: musophobia

   • 1977 March 20, J. D. Smith, “[The Lefthanded Bear—more Animal Stories] Mouse Stash One”, in The CoEvolution Quarterly, number 13, San Francisco, Calif.: POINT, page 110, column 2:

     I was a janitorial understudy in a big church office building, when one of the old hand secretaries from the fourth floor showed up on the first floor with nervous perspiration and tales of mice in her desk. By the time I got back to her office with her, rodentophobia had filled the rooms of her fellow workers.

   • 1988 January–March, Peter Sesterka, “Wild Ski Touring: Rats!”, in Wild: Australia’s Wilderness Adventure Magazine, volume 8, number 1 / 27, page 46, column 1:

     JUST IMAGINE HOW YOU WOULD FEEL IF two days after spending $400 on a brand new snow tent a hungry bush rat literally gnawed its way through your investment late on a stormy night at the base of Mt Jagungal, leaving a hole big enough to shove your fist through. (If you suffer from rodentophobia, stop reading now.)

   • 2006, André Kukla, Joel Walmsley, “[Psychology Loses Its Mind: The Behavioral Revolution] Classical Conditioning”, in Mind: A Historical and Philosophical Introduction to the Major Theories, Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., →ISBN, page 86:

     The CS was a rat, which initially didn’t produce any “fear” in Little Albert. After a few pairings of sudden noise and rat, however, merely seeing the rat was enough to make Little Albert cry. Voilà—“rodentophobia.”

   • 2012, John Sutherland, “Rats”, in The Dickens Dictionary: An A-Z of England’s Greatest Novelist, London: Icon Books Ltd, →ISBN, pages 166–167:

     [Charles] Dickens’s rodentophobia was instilled at an early age. In The Uncommercial Traveller, which he published at the late age of 48, he recalls the horrific tales his nurse told him 40 years before, as a child in Chatham. Most horrible was that of ‘Chips’, a shipwright who makes a pact with the devil in return for ‘an iron pot and a bushel of tenpenny nails and half a ton of copper and a rat that could speak’.

2. (rare, humorous) The avoidance of using a computer mouse.
   • 1988 April, Willie C. de Lyte, “Coming out of the Closet”, in Amiga Workbench, number 23, Boronia, Vic.: Amiga Users Group Inc, Australia Post – Publication No. VBG7930, page 7, column 2:

     All mouse and menu activities have equivalent commands in the command window; very important if you suffer from rodentophobia, or have arrived at the amiga from an IBM clown environment.

   • 1993, Charlie Russel, “The DOS Shell (Or, Why Didn’t You Say This in the First Place?)”, in Murphy’s Laws of DOS: Getting the Best of Your Computer Before It Gets the Best of You, Alameda, Calif.: SYBEX, →ISBN, page 54:

     Rodentophobia? Here’s How to Do It with the Keyboard

   • 2009, Woody Leonhard, “[Running Windows from Start to Finish] Mousing with Your Mouse”, in Windows® 7 All-in-One For Dummies®, Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley Publishing, Inc., →ISBN, book II (Windows 7 Boot Camp), page 85:

     If you have rodentophobia, you can also do the mouse tricks explained in this section by pressing the following key combinations: […]