Word of the day: Wiiitis

Back in the early 1990s, a US doctor identified a medical condition among the video-game-playing community called Nintendinitis. This is the thumb soreness caused by too much controller button-bashing, and I'm sure many Engine Room readers can relate.

Now gamers are suffering a new condition: Wiiitis (pronounced 'wee-EYE-tis', I presume). This has been identified by a Boston doctor called Dr Bonis who gave himself a form of tennis elbow through hours of playing simulated tennis on his Nintendo Wii games console.

Fortunately, the treatment for acute Wiiitis is simple: "ibuprofen for one week, as well as complete abstinence from playing Wii video games", according to the doc.

(Incidentally, I wonder if there is a medical name for the red weals in the centre of the palm many gamers gave themselves rotating a controller thumbstick in games such as Mario Party? And on a personal level, I once suffered from 'Sensible Fingers' - my digits cramped playing too much Sensible Soccer on my PC keyboard...)

Thanks to Sarah for bringing this to our attention!

Word of the day: hobophobia

Looking through the list of phobias I linked to in a previous post, I was surprised and amused to see that the fear of tramps or beggars is given as 'hobophobia'.

But I was also sceptical. The word 'phobia' is from Latin via Greek, and most words ending in '-phobia' also have their roots in the classical languages, whereas 'hobo' almost certainly does not - its origins are uncertain but it seems to date from the 19th century. As a result 'hobophobia' seemed to me to be a most unlikely word – after all, we say 'arachnophobia' not 'spider phobia'.

So I decided to Google it. The results suggested that 'hobophobia' is indeed widely accepted as the name for a fear of tramps or beggars (or 'bums' if you prefer).

In my search I also came across a pseudo-scientific site promising to offer a cure to sufferers of hobophobia. I found the whole site amusing but let me quote you just a little:

Your fear of bums or beggars can result in the following symptoms: breathlessness, excessive sweating, nausea, dry mouth, feeling sick, shaking, heart palpitations, inability to speak or think clearly, a fear of dying, becoming mad or losing control, a sensation of detachment from reality or a full blown anxiety attack.

You are not the only one to suffer from hobophobia. Most sufferers are surprised to learn that they are far from alone in this surprisingly common, although often unspoken, phobia.

Hobophobia is an intense fear of something that poses little or no actual danger. While adults with hobophobia realize that these fears are irrational, they often find that facing, or even thinking about facing, the feared situation brings on a panic attack or severe anxiety.

Can't keep a good beard down

For a brief period yesterday, Google searches for 'pogonotrophic' put the Engine Room as the number one result – ahead of such respected sites as beardcommunity.com. Being an authority on all things pogonotrophic (as a result of choosing pogonotrophy as a word of the day), we can presumably expect beard-related Google ads on the blog before too long...

Coincidentally, a friend of a friend of mine was pogonophobic – pogonophobia being the fear of beards. Eventually he grew a beard himself in what I can only surmise was a form of immersion therapy. Too late – he had already acquired the nickname 'Poggy' (and bears it to this day).

Perhaps you'd like to learn the names of some other great phobias...