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

I believe the best option would be -misia, which would be a Greek-derived suffix meaning "hatred of". Some people are setting precedents for this usage around the Internet, e.g. "logomisia". As far as I know, this suffix is related to the root used in "misanthrope" and "misandry" and "misogyny". Also, "trichomisia" sounds much better than "tricho-o-[anything]" to my ears.

Answer 3

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 4

People only started using -phobia to define feelings of hate or dislike toward something in the middle of the 20th century (1950-1960), and is, itself, a neologism. I suspect that the origin of its use in this manner was at least partially political, because it makes the resultant word sound like a psychological disorder.

As has been said above, the opposite of philos is misein, not phobos, and the use of another word is incorrect and misleading. Medically, -phobe can describe an aversion, but that is already a distortion. Taking it further is simply a bad use of language or a tactical feint (still an improper use, but attended by a reason other than ignorance; a worse crime). If you want to say a person hates something we have a word in the English language that covers it: hate.

I have no problems with coining a word, I just think it shouldn't be frivolous.

Answer 5

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.

Answer 6

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.

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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 7

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 8

It's clear from the erudite responses that we don't have a good answer. The question is important, because -phobic/-phobia has been used politically to imply that the aversion is irrational. The psychiatric phobias (agoraphobia, arachnophobia, triskeidecophobia, etc.) are clearly defined as irrational fears, so the invention of words to label someone's political aversion as homophobia, or Islamophobia, or xenophobia was clearly a political propaganda move to imply that the aversion is irrational.

-odiumic is a great suggestion, if only we could get it into common usage. I've been using -aversive, not because it's a real word, but because people can readily understand it. But we need something. Great thread!

Answer 9

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 10

"-agnosis" is an appropriate suffix for being ignorant about something, and is far more appropriate in descrbing people who loathe something because they are ignorant (or, "un-knowing") about it. In regards to the general lack of understanding non-gays have about non-heterosexuals, it is a very appropriate suffix ... and the toot of most fear and prejudice is being ignorant, not being hateful. The word "homophobic" doesn't even mean "afraid of homosexuals" -- it means "afraid of men". To describe someone who is uninformed or ignorant about men who prefer men as sexual partners, a far better word is "arsenokoítagnostic" ... quite a mouthful, I admit. But, a word tgat long might keep folks from bandying it about needlessly, stupidly, or as a weapon. In very close translation, it means "unknowing about men who lie in bed with other men".

Answer 11

Per Notre Dame English to Latin dictionary: contemptus, contemptus (also contemtus) N M 4 1 M [XXXCO]
contempt/scorn/despising (act/state); ignominy; disregard; object of contempt;

Contemptic/contemtic perhaps?

Per Notre Dame: aspernatio, aspernationis N F 3 1 F [XXXEO]
contempt; spurning; rejection of; aversion to;

aspernatic?

Answer 12

Perhaps a good choice would be to borrow from modern German, where -hass (hatred) is actually used instead of -angst (fear) for many words. Xenophobia is Fremdenhass, not Fremdenangst (which is why it isn't recognised by spell checkers, by the way).

Some examples of actual German words:

• Fremdenhass (xenophobia)
• Schwulenhasser (a homophobic person)
• Frauenhasser (a misogynist)
• Menschenhasser (a misanthrope)

There is also the suffix -feindlich which means "hostile", such as in fremdenfeindlich (anti-foreigners), muslimfeindlich (anti-Islam), frauenfeindlich (misogynistic), Amerika-feindlich (hostile to Americans) and so on. It might be best if you want an adjective.

As a side bonus, it lends itself well to the old chestnut of saying something "sounds better in the original German" if you so desire.