(While Russell is intercontinentaly busy with launching his
small missiles :-)


From "WORLD WIDE WORDS, ISSUE 352, Saturday 2 August 2003"

2. Weird Words: Coulrophobia
-------------------------------------------------------------------
An irrational fear of clowns.

What, fear those delightful purveyors of slapstick comedy? One may as
well go in terror of Santa Claus (but then a few people do that, too).
But clown humour has always embraced cruelty in its teasing and
insulting of other clowns and members of the audience.

Clowns represent anarchy, the personifications of unreason, and a force
of nature out of control. Who knows what actually lies behind their
unchanging painted faces and outlandish costumes? These are all good
enough reasons for even the strongest and most adult of us to feel
unease in the presence of a clown.

Some children are terrified by them and a surprisingly large proportion
of adults confess to finding them creepy and disturbing, so much so that
this word for their condition has had to be invented.

It's not old: perhaps from the 1980s. It's from Greek "koulon", a limb,
which seems strange until you find the related "kolobathristes" was a
stilt-walker. This seems to have been the nearest its unknown coiner
could get to a suitable classical allusion, since classic Greek didn't
have a word for a clown in our modern sense.
-------------------------------------------------------------------


Mike.

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different
ways.  See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.