Word.ws English Dictionary

water fear

water fear noun: a lack of affinity for water; hydrophobia.

Noun

water fear (countable and uncountable, plural water fears)

  1. A lack of affinity for water; hydrophobia.
    • Both men and animals afflicted with rabies dread the appearance of water or any other liquid; hence the term, hydrophobia, or water-fear.1921, Harold Melvin Stanford, The Standard Reference Work
    • Those colloids which absorb considerable water are hydrophyllic colloids, that is, water-fond colloids; while those which absorb but little or none are hydrophobic colloids, that is, water-fear colloids.1926, Principles of General Pharmacy and Chemistry
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see water, fear.
    • One type of water fear harbored by many youngsters is directly traceable to an unfortunate childhood experience.1947, The Journal of Health and Physical Education, volume 18, page 304
    • […] flick of hair a silly song waving
      out of the waterfear.1969, Nimrod - Volume 7, Issue 1, page 19

Examples of water fear in a sentence

  • This latter possibility seems particularly plausible from the perspective of the nonassociative model of water fear described previously.2001, Michael W. Vasey, Mark R. Dadds, The Developmental Psychopathology of Anxiety, page 195:
  • The Lewis (1974) study of water fears also tested another variant of the modeling approach, participant modeling, in which the model carries out the feared activity with the fearful person.2004, John R. Weisz, Psychotherapy for Children and Adolescents:
  • We are not aware of any careful cross-cultural or developmental work showing that water fear is innate, however.2006, Michelle Genevieve Craske, Dirk Hermans, Debora Vansteenwegen, Fear and Learning: From Basic Processes to Clinical Implications:

Forms of water fear

pluralwater fears
alternative formwater-fear

Origin of water fear

From water + fear.

Questions about water fear

What does water fear mean?
Water fear means a lack of affinity for water; hydrophobia.
How do you use water fear in a sentence?
This latter possibility seems particularly plausible from the perspective of the nonassociative model of water fear described previously.
What part of speech is water fear?
Water fear is a noun.
What is the plural of water fear?
The plural of water fear is water fears.

Words near water fear in the dictionary

  1. water engines
  2. water equivalent
  3. water equivalents
  4. water fairies
  5. water fairy
  6. water fear
  7. water fears
  8. water feature
  9. water features
  10. water fennel
  11. water fern

Source and license

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