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Whatchamacallistan? My freedom glass is empty, but your bolshie one is even emptier.
Bravo! jheem. I am impressed with your poetry, if not with your argument. The fact is I did not invent the word "terroristphobia", nor did I say that it was the best of all possible choices.
What I did say, I think you know, is that "terroristphobia" is vastly to be favored over an ungainly word like "deimatotriaphobia" [which I am in serious danger of remembering should I spell it correctly one more time].
As for "beats" and "syllables", ordinary people like myself do not count syllables when we pronounce words, especially those we encounter for the first time. We feel the beat, or the rhythm, of the word, almost instinctively.
"Beat" poets and rappers are not the only people who appreciate poetry which is respectful of the rhythm of words as well as the rhyme. But, you already know that. You are a poet yourself.
You are straining mightily, dear jheem, to take offence to what I have said about your word [which I refuse to spell one more time for reasons already explained], but I have not faulted you for inventing a word which fails to come up to my standards [let alone your own], I have faulted the arbiter of this word challenge for favoring this absurdly pretentious, unpronounceable word over a much simpler choice which is accessible to anyone.
I do not frown on your freedom to create new words, jheem. I exult in it. But in turn I should have the freedom to express an honest opinion on the merits of your candidates for the approbation of the self-proclaimed arbiter of this challenge.
What is undemocratic here, if anything, is the arbiter's proclamation that his choice, however misguided, is "it", thus closing the discussion.
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You are straining mightily [...] to take offence to what I have said about your word [...] I have faulted the arbiter of this word challenge for favoring this absurdly pretentious, unpronounceable word over a much simpler choice which is accessible to anyone.
No offence taken. As I wrote earlier I find that deimatotrophobia is easier to pronounce and doesn't violate important aesthetic criteria, e.g., ease of pronunciation, prosody (your beats, perhaps), not having the clump "stph" in't. I'm not exactly overjoyed with my coinage, but the other one (neologized by some media drone no doubt) is even less satisfying. (How about fear of terrorists? Much better than terroristphobia, unless you're going for the highfalutin' factor, in which case deimatotrophobia wins easily with a gloss.) In the end, you have your preference and are free to use it, I mine, though I can't really imagine myself using either word in conversation or print, and the Arbiter Faldaceus is free to pick whichever word he wants to, too.
That having been said, and in conclusion—there always being an in conclusion (cf. yeahbut®)—, alqaidaphobia, or even militiaphobia, would be preferable.
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formerly known as etaoin...
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and the Arbiter Faldaceus is free to pick whichever word he wants to, tooMake that Arbiter Falacious, jheem, and we are in perfect, faldictitious accord.  And may I say, respectfully, jheem, you are being a bit of an insurrectionist here in proffering new candidates for the approbation of the Arbiter Falacious after he has already pronounced your earlier offering, however half-heartedly advanced, as "it".  Personally, I think the Arbiter's anointment of the word "deimatotriaphobia" [which I have now spelled correctly again in dereliction of my own better judgment] should be emblazoned on his escutcheon [along with his other trophies].
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I think it's important for us to know what the people in wordorigins want for fear of terrorists to mean. A phobia, byits common usage, refers to an irrational fear, at least one that is irrational to the disinterested observer or psychotherapist. I can understand that there might be an irrational fear of terorists, but there's also a rational fear of terrorism )and by extension the terrorists who commit such acts.)
TEd
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Arbiter Falacious
If you're going to play fast and easy with my screen name, I much prefer the name BobB on the late lamented Cafe Dartre came up with, Falderol.
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I think it's important for us to know what the people in wordorigins want for fear of terrorists to mean.
Now that's cutting to the quick of it, TEd Rem!
Fear of terrorism, and by extension fear of those who perpetrate it, is not a phobia in a country on "orange" alert. It is a state-sponsored, state-sanctioned state of mind.
You might even go so far as to say that the state and the public state of mind are of one mind on this. Fear of terrorism is a civic duty, if not an act of patriotism.
One might argue that an "orange" alert, or even the more ubiquitous "yellow" alert, is not a generator of fear, it is only a call for a heightened awareness of suspicious circumstances.
But what is it that the public is to be suspicious of 24/7?
People plotting deadly, indiscriminate harm to innocent men, women and children in virtually every major street of every major city, and, in particular, at every major public event where throngs are packed together so tight any false alarm might trigger a stampede potentially as deadly as any actual act of terrorism.
Is such a state of mind irrational? Only if you impute that irrationality to the state of mind of the state which sanctions or sponsors it.
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I much prefer the name BobB on the late lamented Cafe Dartre came up with, Falderol.A Fool and his pet name are soon parted, Faldage. It is the price of Fooldum.
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I think it's important for us to know what the people in wordorigins want for fear of terrorists to mean.
Hoo, boy, as Longhorn Leghorn used to say: "It's a joke!". When I coined the word, I felt it should mean something like 'irrational fear of the bugbears', but Faldage didn't care for phobetrophobia. (I also felt that alqaedaphobia would have been preferable, because that captures the xenophobia stirred up by the current crop of terrorists that was not evident after the domestic, homespun Federal Building in Oklahoma act of terrorism. Especially, since al-qaeda is a term coined by the US Department of State and not anything that these same terrorists use, like, say, the IRA or the Tamil Tigers) I felt this caught the flavor of the current regime's in need of a change in DC pumping up of the public with the complicit help of what is politically correctly known as the "Liberal" media. Rather than work on a viable foreign policy, the current batch of good old boys in DC have chosen a tried and true method: war frenzy. But I digress. The word I settled on has a taste of 'the fear of the frighteners' which I like, and which I felt tied in with Lucretius' view of superstitions that frighten adults like children frightened of the dark. There, now you know why I coined the word. I wonder what can be said for the folks who foisted terroristphobia on us?
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The word I settled on has a taste of 'the fear of the frighteners' which I like, and which I felt tied in with Lucretius' view of superstitions that frighten adults like children frightened of the dark.
Good analysis, jheem.
How about "phobiaphobia"?
After all, the strategic mission of terrorists is not to produce acts of terrorism on the scale of the terror which those acts produce, but to produce a public state of mind which renders further acts of terrorism redundant.
Since the fallout from 9-11 has produced a public perception, whether credible or not, that all acts of terrorism wherever they occur in the world are coordinated by a master terrorist and, therefore, ultimately directed at 'us', the terrorists who actually have 'us' in their sights don't actually have to do anything ... except, perhaps, keep the back channels humming with disinformation.
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