Tuesday, December 08, 2020
Xenophobia
The word xenophobia and its derivatives seem to be 20th century coinages, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. I suspect French influence.
See Pierre Villard, "Naissance d'un mot grec en 1900. Anatole France et les xénophobes," Mots n°8 (mars 1984) 191-195. I don't see the compound in ancient Greek, and I don't have access to Carl D. Buck and Walter Petersen, A Reverse Lexicon of Greek Nouns and Adjectives Arranged by Terminations (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1948), but I did recently meet with ἐχθρόξενος in Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes 606 and 621. There is also an entry for μισόξενος in Liddell-Scott-Jones.
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