Coronoia

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Unfounded fear surrounding the outbreak of COVID-19, which may include fear of the spread of the virus or fear of governmental conspiracies in the reaction to the virus. uncountable

    "Writing this piece, just when I thought I needed to forge a new word ‘Coronoia’, to suitably denote the exponential spread of irrational fears of this novel virus, I found that it has recently been suggested to the Collins dictionary, and is under consideration."

Example

More examples

"Writing this piece, just when I thought I needed to forge a new word ‘Coronoia’, to suitably denote the exponential spread of irrational fears of this novel virus, I found that it has recently been suggested to the Collins dictionary, and is under consideration."

Etymology

Blend of corona + paranoia.

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