Glossophobia is the fear of public speaking. It comes, like all the other phobias, from the ancient Greeks, more specifically the Athenians, who spent time thinking about speech communication.
You may be more aware of this word because of this recent commercial:
The word itself comes from the Greek word for tongue (glossa) combined, of course, with the more familiar root word for fear (phobos.)
For those of you who are Jackie Gleason/Ralph Cramden fans, it means, “Hummina, hummina, hummina,” accompanied by an urgent finger inserted between neck and shirt collar, with an audible “Gulp,” at the end.
Glossophobia is a disease to which all of us are susceptible, and is associated with several co-morbidities.
Hyper-Infoitis: The swelling of information in the body of a talk, usually caused by an insecure speaker trying to impress her audience with her expertise.
PowerPointitis: The proliferation of PowerPoint slides, caused by the mistaken belief that a presentation is what the speaker says, and not what the audience can take away.
Oldnewsatoid Syndrome: An illness that causes the speaker to tell the audience what it already knows (common in Medical Education.)
Laser Pointer Obsessive Disorder: The need to clutch, fondle, and wiggle a small, thin, pointed object with a magical little hole in the end from which comes a beam of intense light
Hyper Logorrhea: The tendency for speakers to speak so rapidly that the audience has to conclude that the speaker is brilliant but completely unintelligible.
Uhmatosis: The swelling and swarming of inarticulate groans and pre-verbal utterances that get stuck in the cracks between words and stink up the flow and impact of human speech.
Repetitive Uptalk Illness: Occurring primarily in young females, debilitating to their professionalism and credibility, it corrupts the intonation patterns of their speech so as to make them appear needy of approval, paradoxically earning them disdain.
Story Absence Syndrome: The tendency to speak in abstract terms for the duration of the speech, never landing on a concrete example, or story. This lack of sensory language and drama causes listeners eyes to glaze over and become somnolent.
Prolix Patterning Disease: The habit of taking 30 minutes to say what could be said in three. The etiology of this deadly malady is thought to be lack of preparation, fuzzy thinking, or the pleasure of basking in the attention of the crowd, causing the crowd to wish you would stop talking.
Squirrel Wristosis: The habit of letting one’s hands hang limp from the wrist, so called because of the tendency of squirrels to stand on their hind legs and do the same. Speakers with squirrel wristosis don’t look like they can get anything done and are therefore passed over for promotion.
These are just 10 co-morbidities associated with glossophobia. Our speech scientists are hard at work diagnosing other illnesses that cascade from this terrible human scourge.
Stay tuned.