Word.ws English Dictionary

placophobia

placophobia noun: the fear of tombstones.

Noun

placophobia (uncountable)

  1. (rare) The fear of tombstones.
    • Dozens of websites now exist purporting to be skilled in treating this condition — which may be accompanied by or related to other phobias, including placophobia, a fear of tombstones or burial, or ailurophobia, fear of cats — even though there are virtually no documented cases of it.2012, Lisa Morton, Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween, London, UK: Reaktion Books, →ISBN, page 113
    • I know, cryptophobia isn’t a real fear, but the closest thing I could find to describe it was placophobia: the fear of tombstones, or taphophobia: the fear of graves.2013, James Mascia, High Shool Heroes III: Hero Heist, 2nd edition, →ISBN, page 182

Origin of placophobia

From Ancient Greek πλάξ (pláx, “tombstone”) + -o- + -phobia.

Questions about placophobia

What does placophobia mean?
Placophobia means the fear of tombstones.
What part of speech is placophobia?
Placophobia is a noun.

Words near placophobia in the dictionary

  1. placoid
  2. placoidal
  3. placoidian
  4. placoidians
  5. placoids
  6. placophobia
  7. placozoa
  8. placozoan
  9. placozoans
  10. placozoon
  11. placque

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: placophobia (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: “placophobia.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/placophobia. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.