Peniaphobia

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An irrational fear of poverty or financial insufficiency describes a psychological condition
2. This anxiety condition involves excessive worry about lacking financial resources
3. It is characterized by extreme dread of being poor or financially unable to meet basic needs

Etymology: "Peniaphobia" is a modern coinage built from Ancient Greek "penía," meaning "poverty," joined to "-phobia," the combining form meaning "fear" or "morbid dread" that scientists began attaching to Greek roots in the 19th and 20th centuries. The result names a fear that the ancient Greeks would have understood as a concern about want, but would not have had a single word for in this clinical sense. The Greek "penía" also sits behind a surprising relative in English. Latin "penuria," meaning "poverty" or "scarcity," is a separate borrowing into Latin with a similar sense, and it passed into English as "penury." The two words are not descended from one another in English, but they share the same underlying idea of lacking what one needs, so "peniaphobia" and "penury" are related through shared meaning rather than through a direct line of descent.