Word.ws English Dictionary

symphorophilia

symphorophilia noun: a paraphilia involving sexual arousal from staging and watching disasters, such as traffic collisions.

Noun

symphorophilia (uncountable)

  1. (rare) A paraphilia involving sexual arousal from staging and watching disasters, such as traffic collisions.
    • The phylism to which biastophilia and symphorophilia become attached is probably the ungovernable rage of an infantile temper tantrum. The victims of the catastrophe are, like hostages, stand-ins for the original enemy.1986, John Money, Lovemaps, page 92
    • One of the strangest sexual problems occurs with symphorophilia.2006, Linda Edelstein, Writer's Guide to Character Traits, page 168

Origin of symphorophilia

Coined by sexologist John Money.

Questions about symphorophilia

What does symphorophilia mean?
Symphorophilia means a paraphilia involving sexual arousal from staging and watching disasters, such as traffic collisions.
What part of speech is symphorophilia?
Symphorophilia is a noun.

Words near symphorophilia in the dictionary

  1. symphonygoers
  2. symphoria
  3. symphoric
  4. symphorol
  5. symphorols
  6. symphorophilia
  7. symphronistic
  8. symphylan
  9. symphylans
  10. symphylid
  11. symphylids

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: symphorophilia (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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