Thalassophobia
Baby Cthulhu do do do do do do
thalassophobia
thuh-lass-uh-foe-bee-uh
noun
Fear of deep water
Any oceanographer will tell you that the sea is full of horrors and that oceanography is the Devil’s work. It is said that we know more about deep space or the surface of the moon than we do about the bottom of the oceans. Good. Let's keep it that way. Let's go full speed ahead on the colonisation of Mars, so that we may leave the oceans, and the terrifying eldritch creatures that slumber down there, far behind.
What brought on this most recent bout of phobia, I hear you ask? Well, for one thing the oceans are always there, waiting. Secondly, I took a break from leafing through the dictionary and have been absorbed in both a book and a video game this week. The book is called Bending Adversity by David Philling, and starts with a detailed and graphic account of the Great East Japan Earthquake and the subsequent tsunami that swept 20,000 people to their deaths in March of 2011. The video game, Dredge, starts off as an adorable fishing simulator, before going off the deep end (get it?) and making the player battle with grotesque, paranormal aberrations from the abyss. It’s all very Lovecraftian in a very entertaining way.
Anyway, the word ‘phobia’ should be familiar to most English speakers by now, as it is one of the most common and productive morphemes we have. Anything can be attached to the suffix ‘-phobia’ (from the Greek for ‘fear’) to create a word meaning ‘fear of’. Common examples include ‘arachnophobia’ (spiders), ‘claustrophobia’ (small spaces) and ‘acrophobia’ (heights). But one can also consult putative lists of phobias online and come up with delightfully nonsensical ones such as ‘anatidaephobia’ (being watched by a duck), ‘lockiophobia’ (childbirth) and ‘arachibutyrophobia’ (peanut butter sticking to the roof of one’s mouth). Playing with classical roots is fun.
‘Thalassophobia’ comes from the Greek root ‘thalassa’ meaning, perhaps unsurprisingly, ‘sea’. It was first recorded in English in 1897. While research on the origins and nature of thalassophobia is thin on the ground, I personally prefer the evolutionary explanation: humans have evolved a healthy fear of the unknown depths of the ocean because, and I repeat, the sea is full of horrors.