Word.ws English Dictionary

epistemophilia

epistemophilia noun: an excessive love of, or striving for, knowledge.

Noun

epistemophilia (uncountable)

  1. An excessive love of, or striving for, knowledge.
  2. (Psychoanalysis) As used by psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, epistemophilia—or, as she framed it, the "epistemophilic instinct"—is the wish to know, and is rooted in libido. Such instinct results from Oedipal conflicts in the child psyche.

Origin of epistemophilia

From Ancient Greek ἐπιστήμη (epistḗmē, “knowledge”) + φίλια (phília, “love”).

Questions about epistemophilia

What does epistemophilia mean?
Epistemophilia means an excessive love of, or striving for, knowledge.
What part of speech is epistemophilia?
Epistemophilia is a noun.

Words near epistemophilia in the dictionary

  1. epistemologists
  2. epistemologs
  3. epistemologue
  4. epistemologues
  5. epistemology
  6. epistemophilia
  7. epistemé
  8. epistemés
  9. episterna
  10. episternal
  11. episternum

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: epistemophilia (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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