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Homophobia describes dislike or prejudice against homosexual people.

Xenophobia describes an intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries.

What about those who discriminate against fat people? In my country, I hear people discriminate, attack and devalue them all the time.

What do we call them?

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  • I've seen the word "fatphobia" used; even though it is not correctly formed from a classical perspective, people use it anyway, like calling making cocktails "mixology" or talking about "workaholics".
    – herisson
    Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 2:21
  • I would guess "fatasizers".
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 2:25
  • 1
    The term I hear most often is the act of expressing that dislike: fat shaming. Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 4:57
  • Isn't xenophobia a fear of people altogether?
    – Dog Lover
    Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 0:59

1 Answer 1

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It is called:

Weight stigma, also known as weightism, weight bias, and weight-based discrimination, is discrimination or stereotyping based on one's weight, especially very fat people. [Wikipedia]

Weightist is one who exhibits weightism.

Fattism is a synonym of weightism also and fattist is one who treats someone unfairly because they are fat. According to Google Ngram result, fattism is less common than weightism.

Weightism/Fattism is a sub-type of sizeism also:

Sizeism or size discrimination is discrimination based on a person's size. Size discrimination usually refers to extremes in physical size, such as very tall or short; extremely thin or fat. [Wikipedia]


On the other hand, if we follow the same structure of homophobia and xenophobia, we could come up with pachyphobia.

In Greek, the word for fat/overweight is παχύς (pachýs). There are a few instances of pachyphobia on the net also.

We can even come up with pachysarkophobia which could mean the fear of obese people. In Greek, παχύσαρκος (pachýsarkos) means obese. (derived from pachýs fat + sárka flesh). Surprisingly, I could find a single example on a forum where this word is used.


There is also an obvious coined word fatophobia and Urbandictionary has the definition: "Fear of fat people or fat people walking past them."

There is another coined word cacomorphobia - the fear of fat or obese people is derived from Greek caco meaning ugly, morpho meaning shape and phobos meaning fear or aversion. [fearof.net]

Lipophobia and obesophobia can come to your mind but they have different meanings.

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  • Are fattists guilty of fattism or fattistry? :)
    – tchrist
    Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 2:33
  • Apparently, fattism is a synonym of weightism. Wikipedia could have listed as an alternative term.
    – ermanen
    Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 2:36
  • Fattism seems less common. Ngram result.
    – ermanen
    Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 2:38
  • I would have thought pachyphobia was fear of elephants. ;-)
    – Jim
    Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 3:27
  • @Jim: That is elephantophobia :)
    – ermanen
    Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 3:30

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