Anatidaephobia is the fictional fear that one is being watched by a duck, its name built from Anatidae, the biological family that includes ducks, and the suffix denoting fear. The term was coined as a joke by cartoonist Gary Larson for his comic strip The Far Side and was never intended to describe a real clinical condition. It has no standing as a recognized phobia in psychiatry and belongs among the jocular and fictional phobia names that exist mainly as wordplay and internet humor rather than genuine anxiety disorders, though its wide recognition has made it a familiar reference point in discussions of how phobia-naming conventions can be played with for comic effect.
Facts
Classification
Type of Phenomenon Diagnostic ChapterAnxiety or Fear-Related Disorders 2 Sources
1. Anatidaephobia (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia Anatidaephobia lead paragraph (w-bbfill-psych-diag-0926, keyword classification against phenomenon-kind enum definitions, hand-checked)View the Source 2. ICD-11 Browser (WHO)
World Health Organization
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