Is there a suffix for loathing?

Question

For instance trichomania is a love of hair, and trichophobia is a fear of hair. But what suffix would denote a loathing of hair?

Edit: Maybe I'm looking at the wrong end of the word, and I should be considering the prefix "miso-".

Answer 1

With apologies in advance, I offer the following neologism: -odiumic, derived from odium, "quality that provokes hatred; offensiveness" (from Latin odium) plus ic, "used to form adjectives from nouns with the meaning 'of or pertaining to'". Note, it may be that -odious, a suffix carefully derived from odious by prefixing a hyphen, would work better; odious means "arousing or meriting strong dislike, aversion, or intense displeasure." The table below presents some relevant combinations for comparison and gnashing of teeth upon.

• hirsuodiumic, hirsuodious - after hirsute, from Latin hirsūtus (“shaggy, hairy”).
• dasuodiumic, dasuodious - after dasypygal, hairy-bottomed, from Greek δασύς (dasus, “hairy, dense”)
• criniodiumic, criniodious - after crinose, hairy, from Latin crinis hair.
• comaodiumic, comaodious - after Latin comatus, "having long hair." (Note spelling difference between comaodious and commodious.)
• trichoodiumic, trichoodious - after trichology, "science or study of hair", from Greek τριχ (trich), root of θρίξ (thrix, “hair”) + -λογια

A concern I have with -odious is it may mean causing dislike, rather than (like -odiumic) being of dislike. For example, while hirsuodiumic may be interpreted as "of disliking hairiness", hirsuodious might mean "causing dislike of hairiness". A second concern, which I will leave to you, is determining which stem to use, with subconcerns of whether to mix Greek and Latin forms and of which stems more connote hair itself vs hairiness.

Answer 2

Initially, words ending in -phobia referred to an irrational fear of something, but it was later generalized so as to include the feeling of aversion. So you could use -phobia to describe an aversion to something, too.

Answer 3

English really doesn’t have much in the way of affective suffixes. One might argue that ‑ette is one such, but that serves several functions, not just one of positive affect. It often serves only to create a feminine version of something, not a smaller or cuter version, like bachelorette, jockette — but ovenette, diskette for smaller versions. For feminines, you might get more traction out of ‑ess as in heiress, or ‑ine as in heroine.

I can’t think of any suffixes in English that work for negative affect, to say that we don’t like something. Spanish has a pretty rich set of augmentative and pejorative suffixes, like ‑ón/ona, ‑aco/a, ‑azo/a, ‑ote/a ‑ajo/a, but I don’t think English works that way. You just have to sneer, I guess.

---

Edit

Upon reading other comments, you seem to be asking not for a suffix but rather for a combining form. Here are examples of prefixes, suffixes, and combining forms.

• Prefixes: a‑, ad‑, allo‑, be‑, co‑, di‑, dia‑, dys‑, en‑, ex‑, fore‑, giga‑, hyper‑, hypo‑, il‑, im‑, in‑, mal‑, mis‑, meta‑, non‑, ob‑, over‑, peri‑, self‑, syn‑, trans‑, ultra‑, un-, and vice‑.
• Suffixes: ‑a, ‑able, ‑aceous, ‑acity, ‑ade, ‑age, ‑ality, ‑ance, ‑ature, ‑bility, ‑ble, ‑by, ‑cade, ‑cula, ‑cy, ‑dom, ‑dyne, ‑ed, ‑elle, ‑en, ‑ence, ‑ent, ‑ergic, ‑ery, ‑esce, ‑esque, ‑ful, ‑fy, ‑head, ‑hood, ‑ial, ‑ian, ‑ible, ‑ic, ‑ide, ‑iety, ‑ify, ‑ing, ‑ise, ‑istic, ‑ium, ‑ive, ‑ization, ‑ize, ‑izing, ‑less, ‑ling, ‑lite, ‑ly, ‑ment, ‑most, ‑ness, ‑ode, ‑oon, ‑orium, ‑otic, ‑our, ‑ous, ‑plex, ‑ploid, ‑some, ‑speak, ‑th, ‑trix, ‑tude, ‑ty, ‑type, ‑ula, ‑ulum, ‑ure, and ‑wick.
• Combining forms: ‑archy, ‑babble, bi‑, ‑cardia, ‑cephalic, ‑cline, ‑cole, ‑colous, ‑core, ‑cratic, ‑cratical, ‑culture, culturo‑, cyber‑, ‑dactyl, ‑derm, dictyo‑, digi‑, ‑ennial, femto‑, ‑form, Franken‑, ‑gamous, ‑graphical, ‑haemia/‑hemia, ‑hedron, ‑iad, ichno‑, ‑iform, ‑ifuge, ‑kinesis, ‑lepsy, ‑lingual, ‑lithic, ‑logical, manu‑, ‑max, Mc‑, ‑meter, ‑morphic, morpho‑, muci‑, myco‑, nano‑, ‑nomial, ‑ocratic, ‑odont, ‑onym, oscillo‑, paedo‑/pedo‑, ‑path, ‑ped, pico‑, ‑scape, ‑sophy, syn‑, ‑tactic, teleo‑, Teuto‑, thely‑, ‑therm, ‑thetic, ‑trope, ‑trophy, ‑uretic, vagi‑, ‑valent, were‑, ‑wise, xylo‑, yester‑, ‑zoa, ‑zoic, and zoo‑.

Answer 4

Simply put, English isn't built like that, with logical rules that always apply. What tends to happen is words are "coined" and enter general usage where they are sufficiently distinct so that a wide group of people adopt them. That way the language is able to distinguish between the dislike and allergic aversion:

Here are examples of words that have been formed in this way to denote "loathing"

Xenophobia - Dislike of foreigners

Homophobia - Dislike of homosexuals/homosexuality

Gynophobia - Dislike of females (although male chauvinism is more commonly used)

Androphobia - Dislike of males

Anglophobia - Dislike of English things

See this link for many more examples

Answer 5

Although -phobia is typically associated with fear, it is also used to talk about a dislike. Homophobia is therefore equally applied to a dislike of homosexuals (the more common usage) as the fear of them.

In some cases -pathy can also be used, as in antipathy.

Additionally, mis-, as in misanthropy or misogyny.

Still, phobia is the correct ending.

Answer 6

The use of -phobia as a suffix just feels wrong. It's too firmly associated (in my mind, at least) with an irrational aversion to or fear of something. The modern usage of the suffix (homophobia, islamophobia and so forth) seems too contrived, and it jars each time I hear it. I don't fear homosexuals. I like some people and dislike others but my antipathy is based on factors other than their sexuality.

Unfortunately there are some people whose antipathies towards other people are based on the sexuality of those people, so a suffix denoting that is required. Ditto the other words where -phobia doesn't really cut the mustard.

If a correct suffix isn't readily to hand, neither in English nor Greek nor Serbo-Croatian, I don't see anything wrong with making one up. For example, homovilic, using vilify to form the suffix. The difficulty is that the current abusage is too firmly entrenched for anything else to become established.