Noviophobia

Chris explains his "phobia". Note the text box in the screenshot.

"I'm sure she is already paired up with some jerk."

Noviophobia is a word Chris created that he describes as his general fear of girls being paired up with a boyfriend. While normal people would suggest that this is a form of social anxiety or that Chris is just love shy, Chris of course felt the need to coin his own term for it.

Chris's noviophobia manifested itself during the first months of his Love Quest, and came to be because the girls he asked out would often turn him down on the grounds that they "already had a boyfriend," due to the Infinitely-High Boyfriend-Factor. This eventually led to Chris's obsession with finding a boyfriend-free girl. In a moment of typical egotism, Chris decided his envy and resentment of men with girlfriends was a legitimate phobia, and so formed the word 'noviophobia' by using the Spanish word novio, meaning "boyfriend", and the English term phobia, derived from the Greek word φόβος (phóbos), meaning fear. Chris used this word often and simply assumed others would understand its meaning without any explanation.

Noviophobia as a name has several problems. First and foremost, Chris has used it to describe jealous feelings towards men in relationships - something which in no way resembles a phobia, which is an irrational fear or hatred. It also simply refers to boyfriends in abstraction, which isn't an accurate summation of Chris's issue with women who are in relationships. Finally, the word itself is a linguistic abomination; the prefixes for -phobia should be Ancient Greek in origin unless the word does not exist in Greek and cannot be Hellenicised (in which case, an irregular word is formed using a Latin or English prefix, but still not a Spanish one). A more accurate term for Chris's illegitimate phobia would be herastophobia, as ἐραστής (herastés) is the Ancient Greek word for a male, dominant lover; although as addressed he possesses no actual phobia at all.

The word has been alternatively spelt as "noiophobia", as it appears in Christian's letter to Nintendo Power about how Sprung has helped this condition. Chris later explained that this was an accidental misspelling.

Uses by Chris

In addition to the infamous Nintendo Power letter, Chris has used this particular invented term on several occasions.

• Chris apparently described his noviophobia (spelled as "novio phobia" by the examiner) to the psychiatrist he spoke with during his psychiatric evaluation from 2004.
• Sonichu's News Dash contains multiple references to noviophobia, in Chris's third-person description of himself and in a discussion of his letter to Nintendo Power (where he corrects the magazine's spelling of the term).
• Chris also mentions his noviophobia several times in the different editions of his Story of My Current Days.
• Though he doesn't use the full term, Chris mentions his phobia of boyfriends during the Animal Crossing Documentary.
• In his edited version of his Encyclopedia Dramatica page, published on the CWCipedia in December 2009, Chris claimed that he had gotten over his fear of boyfriends in general, replacing it with a more specific fear and hatred of trolls.

See also

• Chris and Spanish