Bibliophobes

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who harbors an intense fear or aversion towards books and reading materials
2. One who experiences anxiety or discomfort in the presence of books and often goes to great lengths to avoid them
3. An individual characterized by a strong dislike or phobia related to literature and reading activities

Etymology: "Bibliophobes" is the plural of "bibliophobe," a noun meaning a person who fears or dislikes books. The word is built from two Greek elements: "biblio-", from "biblion" meaning "book," and "-phobe," from "phobos," meaning fear, with the agent suffix turning the fear into a person who has it. The pairing is a neat piece of word-building, since "bibliophile," a lover of books, was formed the same way with "-phile," from Greek "philos" meaning loving or fond of. Because the "biblio-" element means book, the root also explains why the word for a book, "bible," shares the same ancestry: "biblion" was the Greek term for a scroll or papyrus, and the sacred text eventually took its name from it. A bibliophobe, then, is literally someone who fears the scroll, a sense that makes the playful opposition to "bibliophile" immediately clear.