I am looking for a name for an idea that I have for a website. It is a niche hobby, but there is a greek word for it that most people don’t know. Lets say its a book club and the word was Bibliophile or a music club called Melophile.
Would you, if you did not know the meaning, think of it as something sexual, or maybe even something bad? I am nervous that users might relate it to pedophile even though that is just one of, (but maybe best known) philias there are
I might quirk an eyebrow at someone trying to force in Greek root words. Depending on how smoothly the word can be read or spoken, it might give off “I’m so smart” vibes or obfuscate the intent of the website. Are there words from English or whatever language you’re going to post this in that would better describe the intent?
No hangup on -phile specifically, would have to see the word coming before it.
Definitely the vibe I got from this guy using the term heliophile and then after he asked if I knew what it was…. Explained it anyway, and how people always recoil at the use of the word.
I was just thinking, maybe they’re recoiling from your personality bro.
I have some interest in chemistry and after a while when I hear “phile” my first thought is “they are attracted to water”.
A nucleophile happens by and notices your electrophile. Your electrophile is attracted to their greater electron density and ditches you, the leaving group, for them. Was this SN1 or SN2?
Hydrophilic!
So… you are a chemophile!! See what I mean? It kind of sounds negative without it being the case.
i like water
That part where it sounds negative is happening in your own head.
I think if you step back and evaluate this thread, you’ll find we’re all telling you it’s a non-problem.
My advice is to not worry about it and move on.
And, long shot, maybe take a look at your social surroundings and see if you’ve been in a group of pathological offense-takers. Hanging out with these types can result in your seeing the world as a minefield of unintended social insult.
It really seems to me like the thing you’re worried about is a non-issue.
Phile is pretty much the best known greek suffix out there. It gets tagged onto most hobbies, so you don’t have to worry about it being defaulted to sexual matters. Tbh, most of the paraphilias are so obscure that nobody without an interest in the field is going to know them the way -phobias are. I mean, can you name the other chronophilias besides pedophilia? Did you even know that there were others? Most people really only know one or two sexual-philias at most, where they’ll have heard of a dozen or so non sexual ones.
But, just tacking phile or philia onto a word can be clunky, so you might end up with it not working well anyway.
Yeah I shared a link in an other comment about this. There seem to be quite a lot, and most of them end with “philia”. This is also my main concern. That most will have heard the suffix used with one of those
I would understand that it just means a connoisseur of something, but you could always change the spelling to “file” to make it more digital-y and even less associated with problematic obsessions.
This is actually interesting! I wanted to use “files” to start with, like “Flower-Files” but the domain was taken. So i thought flowerphiles could be a fun twist. The true word would be Anthophile though, (or Botanophile for plants) and people would not necessarilly know this (this is btw an example and not the actual wordplay that I am working on atm)
Could also just double-domain it, anthophile.com && ILikeFlowers.com or something like that. Is there a “flowers” TLD? ILike.flowers
No, because I know what the suffix means.
But this is my question. The suffix means “to like” but this can be a good and a bad thing, depending on what the prefix is, like mentioned in the description. If you did not recognize the prefix would the average user assume the suffix to be sexual or negatively charged?
I dunno. Does this sound sexual to you?
Barantaphile
Well, I don’t think there is anything inherently sexual about the suffix, so no. But can’t speak for the average user.
Nope.
No, but I’m surprised you didn’t go with the suffix mania.
Nah it’s okay. Anglophile doesn’t mean you want to bang me.
Unless…?
“Audiophile” has never before brought to mind the concept of “pedophile”.
In fact, note the way we shorten the word: “pedo”.
I wouldn’t worry about it. But I’m autistic, so the way my brain processes these words might be different than an NT’s brain.
Mostly I think it’s only going to be a problem for people who are looking for trouble, and you can’t really avoid problems with those people.
If I didn’t know the meaning, I would just be confused about seeing the words since I wouldn’t know what they meant.
Only dumb people will
That’s a large group though.
Yeah but fuck em
where do you think they keep coming from??
Sorry my bad. Butt fuck them
Not necessarily, it depends on whether I recognize the first part of the word. For example, I dont immediately think “audiophile,” is negative or sexual in nature.
It really depends. I think -phile tends to make me think non-sexual, and -philia makes me think sexual. Probably just because of how the words are used.
People tend to be willing to describe themselves as an x-phile, but psychological or legal literature are more likely to say something like “a person with x-philia” or “displaying traits of x-philia”.
I suspect the part with descriptions in literature is due to it being in a 3rd person. There seems to be a recent-ish trend though for people to refer to themselves in a ‘person who has X’ sense though to separate the person from the condition so maybe that changes.
Person First language. “A person with autism” means we use the word for the diagnosis, rather than the word for a diagnosed person (e.g., “autist”? Was that ever a real word?).
That’s the phrase I was looking for.
I’m pretty sure autist as a single word description was more a 4chan thing, but autistic person has been pretty common use.
In autistic online communities, we tend to refer to ourselves as autists. Sometimes I call myself “an autistic”.
It doesn’t bother me, personally. And it seems to not bother the other autistic people I’ve interacted with.
There is audiophile. It refers to someone who is obsessed about audio quality.
Theres also Audiophilic content too, and yet if you say you’re an audiophile no one mistakes it to mean you listen to audio porn. Context is going to be king with that suffix I wager.
No. There’s plenty of common examples of that suffix being used in a non-sexual non-negative context. For example: someone who enjoys reading books is called a bibliophile, there’s also the youtube channels Computerphile and Numberphile.
yeah I used the bibliophile example in my text above. ,Computerphile and Numberphile, are mixed words of english/greek. It is actually interesting, for examble, that they have used Numberphile instead of Arithmophile, wich would be the actual word. My concern is when people don’t recognize the prefix and only recognize the suffix, if that will be different
