Word.ws English Dictionary

clownophobia

clownophobia noun: the fear of clowns.

Noun

clownophobia (uncountable)

  1. (informal, rare) The fear of clowns.
    • A facile, pop-psych explanation would unearth the roots of clownophobia in childhood traumas.1997, Ashley Crawford, Ray Edgar, editors, Transit Lounge: An Interface Book from 21.C, North Ryde, →ISBN, page 174
    • While most of us see Ronald McDonald as a nice corporate symbol, the 8% of the population that suffers from clownophobia (more properly called coulrophobia) view him as evil incarnate.2003, Richard Crouse, The 100 Best Movies You've Never Seen, ECW Press, →ISBN, page 130

Synonyms of clownophobia

Origin of clownophobia

From clown + -o- + -phobia.

Questions about clownophobia

What does clownophobia mean?
Clownophobia means the fear of clowns.
What part of speech is clownophobia?
Clownophobia is a noun.

Words near clownophobia in the dictionary

  1. clownless
  2. clownlike
  3. clownly
  4. clownness
  5. clownology
  6. clownophobia
  7. clowns
  8. clowns about
  9. clowns around
  10. clowns on
  11. clownship

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: clownophobia (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “clownophobia.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/clownophobia. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.