Nucleomitophobia
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Fear of nuclear radiation, now especially atomic bombs. uncountable
"Nikita Krushchev's war of nerves was plainly having an effect on the U.S. citizenry... There were the usual neurotics. In Chicago, public officials received a spate of calls from women complaining that their hair curlers were radioactive, from men suspicious of the olives in their martinis. (Chicago Psychiatrist Milton A. Dushkin named the ailment "nucleomitophobia"—fear of the atom)."
Example
More examples"Nikita Krushchev's war of nerves was plainly having an effect on the U.S. citizenry... There were the usual neurotics. In Chicago, public officials received a spate of calls from women complaining that their hair curlers were radioactive, from men suspicious of the olives in their martinis. (Chicago Psychiatrist Milton A. Dushkin named the ailment "nucleomitophobia"—fear of the atom)."
Etymology
Coined by psychiatrist Milton Arnold Dushkin in the early 1960s, from nucleo- (“atomic nucleus”) + mito- (“mitosis”) + -phobia (“fear of”), in reference to a supposed resemblance of atomic fission to cellular division.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.