Noviophobia

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

Noviophobia, sometimes spelled as Noiophobia, is a word Chris created that he describes as his general fear of girls being paired up. 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 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. Chris 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.

The name Chris coined for his fear is therefore not completely logical, as it refers to the fear of boyfriends themselves, and not so much to the fear of girls being undatable. It also wouldn't suffice as a scientific medical term, because fears are usually derived from Greek words. An eligible term would be philophobia, using the Greek word φίλος (phílos), which in this context, roughly means "male friend" or "boyfriend", or agoriphobia, from the Greek αγόρι, meaning "boyfriend".

The word is alternatively spelled "Noiophobia", as it appears in Christian's letter to Nintendo Power about how Sprung has helped this condition. It is unclear if Chris (or Nintendo Power) misspelled it in the letter, but he has gotten it right in other documents.

See also

• Spanish