noun

• Extreme or irrational fear or dislike of anything new or unfamiliar.

  ‘Shyness - the human equivalent of neophobia - can be detected in infants as young as 14 months.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘It has also been shown that birds may reject novel prey on the basis of unfamiliarity alone or neophobia.’
  • ‘To measure neophobia, she filled a dish with peanuts and apples, a treat that she calls ‘the Amazon equivalent of chocolate,’ then dangled an unfamiliar object above it and timed a bird's delay in approaching.’
  • ‘To compare object neophobia between populations, a second experiment using a similar protocol and the same individuals as in the prior experiment was conducted.’
  • ‘It would also be necessary to determine if their sensitivity to habitat modification is related to neophobia or simply to the inability to learn a novel resource.’
  • ‘And it leads me to think that the notion of queer used here is strongly associated with neophilia and neophobia, ie degree of attraction to novelty.’
  • ‘To illustrate this point, assembled hacks would be encouraged to try new things, and would thus experience this neophobia first hand.’