Cainophobia

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The fear of newness and/or of things that are new. uncountable

    "It is not by means of a social xenophobia and cainophobia that we shall succeed in junking our sawdust goals but only by a sincere and passionate openness to new experience."

Example

More examples

"It is not by means of a social xenophobia and cainophobia that we shall succeed in junking our sawdust goals but only by a sincere and passionate openness to new experience."

Etymology

From the Ancient Greek roots καινός (kainós, “new”) or καινότης (kainótēs, “newness”) + -phobia.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.