Claustrophobia is a Latin-Greek hybrid that purists hated but couldn't stop — the same Latin root for "close" gives us cloister, closet, clause, conclude, and exclude.
An irrational or extreme fear of confined or enclosed spaces. A type of anxiety disorder.
Modern Latin coinage from Latin claustrum (bolt, bar, enclosed place) + Greek phobos (fear). Latin claustrum from claudere (to shut, close), from Proto-Indo-European *kleh₂u- (hook, peg, to close) Key roots: claustrum (Latin: "bolt, bar, enclosed place"), claudere (Latin: "to shut, close"), phobos (Greek: "fear, terror").
Claustrophobia was coined in 1879 by combining Latin claustrum (enclosed place) with Greek phobos (fear) — a hybrid that Latin purists disliked but that proved too useful to resist. The Latin root claudere (to close) also gives us "close," "closet," "cloister," "clause" (a closed unit of text), "conclude" (to close completely), and "exclude" (to close out). The Greek god Phobos — personification of fear