Botanophobe

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Someone who experiences an intense or irrational fear of plants and vegetation
2. A person afflicted with an abnormal dread of plants, flowers, or other botanical life
3. An individual with a pathological fear of plants or plant-related matter

Etymology: "Botanophobe" is a modern coinage built from Greek, not a word that has come down from antiquity. Its first part comes from the Greek "botanē," meaning "plant" or "herb," which gave English "botany." The second part comes from "phobos," meaning "fear" or "dread," the source of "-phobia." The ending "-phobe" follows the pattern of words such as "Anglophobe," where the suffix names a person who dreads or hates the thing named in the first half. Combining "botano-" with "-phobe" yields someone who fears plants. Because the pieces are classical, the word can be formed on demand, which explains why it appears in lists of rare fear-terms rather than in everyday speech.