A.Word.A.Day --nomophobia

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Oct 27, 2025

This week’s theme
There’s a word for it

This week’s words
nomophobia

Illustration: Anu Garg + AI

Previous week’s theme
Adjectives

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Have you ever tried to describe something only to wonder, “Surely there’s a word for this... I just don’t know it yet?”

Of course, you could use a whole series of words to describe it, but instead of a bunch of connecting flights, wouldn’t it be nicer to find a nonstop? A single, perfectly packed word that gets you straight to your destination, no linguistic layovers, no meaning lost in baggage claim?

That’s what we’re doing this week: taking direct flights through the dictionary.

What are some ideas, feelings, or everyday oddities for which you wish there was a word? And what would that word be? Share below or email us at words@wordsmith.org. Include your location (city and state).

(Fasten your lexical seatbelts; we’re cleared for immediate definition.)

nomophobia

PRONUNCIATION:

(no-muh-FO-bee-uh)

MEANING:

noun:
1. The fear or dislike of laws or rules.
2. The fear of not having access to or being unable to use one’s mobile phone.

ETYMOLOGY:

For 1: From Greek nomo- (custom, law) + -phobia (fear). Earliest documented use: 1803.
For 2: From no + mobile + phobia. Earliest documented use: 2008.

NOTES:

How the word has evolved in two hundred years! From lawless to wireless. From the fear of being behind bars to having no bars. From a jail cell to a phone cell ...

Today, we clutch it like it’s life support. We’d rather lose our wallet than our phone. How bad is your nomophobia? Come clean below or confess via email: words@wordsmith.org.

And if you’re blissfully untouched by these devices, we’d love to hear from you too, by email, stone tablet, passenger pigeon, or snailmail: Wordsmith.org, PO Box 2155, Woodinville WA 98072-2155, USA

USAGE:

“Well, Sol, I suffer from this cursed nomophobia. I can’t be without my mobile device in my hand, and I can’t stop multitasking 24 hours a day.”
Fernando Viveros; The Light; Caligrama; 2020.

See more usage examples of nomophobia in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else. -Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President (27 Oct 1858-1919)

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