neophobic
neophobic noun: a person or animal that fears or dislikes new or novel experiences or food.
Noun
neophobic (plural neophobics)
- A person or animal that fears or dislikes new or novel experiences or food.
- In unpublished work, P. E. Cowan finds Rattus rattus, like R. norvegicus, to be markedly neophobic. These commensal species have been compared with two Australian congeners, R. fuscipes and R. villosissimus, both largely independent of man and neither neophobic in the laboratory conditions in which...1963, S. A. Barnett, The Rat: A Study in Behavior, Transaction Publishers, →ISBN, page 48
- Similarly, it would be appropriate if acutely poisoned rats became neophobic in general (as distinct from avoid-ing a particular food, that is, poison-shy); they should then become correspondingly paleophilic.1963, S. A. Barnett, The Rat: A Study in Behavior, Transaction Publishers, →ISBN, page 68
- Synonyms:
- paleophobic
- Antonyms:
- paleophilic
Adjective
neophobic (not comparable)
Synonyms of neophobic
- paleophobic
Antonyms
- paleophilic
Forms of neophobic
| plural | neophobics |
|---|
Origin of neophobic
From neo- + -phobic.
Questions about neophobic
- What does neophobic mean?
- Neophobic means a person or animal that fears or dislikes new or novel experiences or food.
- What part of speech is neophobic?
- Neophobic can be a noun or an adjective.
- What is the plural of neophobic?
- The plural of neophobic is neophobics.
Words near neophobic in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: neophobic (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: “neophobic.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/neophobic. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.