Word.ws English Dictionary

neophilia

UK/niːəˈfɪ.li.ə/

neophilia noun: the love of novelty, new things, innovation, or unfamiliar places or situations.

Noun

neophilia (usually uncountable, plural neophilias)

  1. (usually) The love of novelty, new things, innovation, or unfamiliar places or situations.
    • LIKE SOCIABILITY, conscientiousness, or any other trait, your particular expression of neophilia has potential advantagesand drawbacks. Exploiting its strengths and compensating for its limitations begins with an understanding of your […]2011, Winifred Gallagher, New: Understanding Our Need for Novelty and Change, Penguin, →ISBN
    • On the one hand, it was certainly imbued with the desire for change (rampant neophilia). On the other hand, it argued that what ordinary people wanted — rather than what planners, architects and other aesthetic judges said they ought to want […]2013, Jonathan Hughes, Simon Sadler, Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism, Routledge, →ISBN, page 2
  2. (usually) The preference for any new foods not forming part of the diet associated with an earlier nutritional deficiency or other illness.
    • In order to account for the appearance of a novelty response in the deficient or recovered rat, Rozin and Rodgers (1967) suggest that either the state of deficiency triggers an innate neophilia, or that the deficient rat develops an aversion to the deficient diet and thus shows a strong preference...1967, Paul Rozin, “Specific aversions as a component of specific hungers”, in Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, volume 64, number 2, →DOI, page 237; 242

Antonyms of neophilia

Forms of neophilia

pluralneophilias

Origin of neophilia

From neo- + -philia.

Questions about neophilia

What does neophilia mean?
Neophilia means the love of novelty, new things, innovation, or unfamiliar places or situations.
What part of speech is neophilia?
Neophilia is a noun.
How do you pronounce neophilia?
Neophilia is pronounced /niːəˈfɪ.li.ə/ (UK).
What is the plural of neophilia?
The plural of neophilia is neophilias.

Words near neophilia in the dictionary

  1. neopharmaphobia
  2. neopharyngeal
  3. neopharynx
  4. neophile
  5. neophiles
  6. neophilia
  7. neophiliac
  8. neophiliacs
  9. neophilias
  10. neophilic
  11. neophilics

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: neophilia (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.

Last updated:

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