smack; bandwidth; nomophobia

[Ben Zimmer]

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 6:28 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
> On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 8:04 AM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "Nomophobia: Fear of Being Without a Smart Phone."
>
> What's the connection? Ir is just another of those "Carborundum"
> things, with no connection to knowledge of the classics, a pswaydoword
> that's supposed by the polloi to be intrinsically funny?

It helps to know that the coinage is from the UK, where "mobile
(phone)" can be shortened to "mo" (as in "moco" for "mobile company").
So it's just "no + mo(bile) + -phobia". But as one of Michael
Quinion's pointed out, the Hellenistically minded would read
"nomophobia" as "fear of the law":

http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/bmpf.htm

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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