Apeirophobia

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An intense, persistent fear of infinity, endlessness, or things without boundaries or limits
2. An irrational dread of boundless spaces, infinite sequences, or anything perceived as having no end or finite limit
3. A pathological anxiety triggered by the concept of endlessness, limitless expanse, or the absence of defined boundaries

Etymology: Apeirophobia is a plain compound, built from "apeiro-", a combining form of the Greek "apeiros", meaning "boundless" or "without limit", and "-phobia", from Greek "phobos", meaning fear. The first element comes from "peras", meaning "limit" or "end", with the negative prefix "a-" placed in front, so the Greek sense is literally "without an end". The pattern is the same as in other fear words such as "claustrophobia" (fear of enclosed spaces) and "arachnophobia" (fear of spiders), where "-phobia" is attached to a Greek root describing the feared thing. Here the feared thing is the unending, so the word names dread of anything that has no boundary, whether that is a distance, a span of time or a set of numbers. Because the word is built from classical parts rather than inherited from ancient usage, it reflects modern coinage: the Greek elements are reassembled to name a fear that the ancient Greeks would have described with ordinary words for "endless" rather than with a special term.

Synonyms: infinity fear