Meanings
- uncountableThe fear of infinity and/or eternity.
The clearest evidence of Aristotle's apeirophobia is to be found in the Posterior Analytics, book 1, chapters 19-22.
1998, P. Christopher Smith, The Hermeneutics of Original Argument: Demonstration, Dialectic, Rhetoric, Northwestern University Press, →ISBN, page 1923 more examples
My view is free from apeirophobia, the horror of the infinite, which colored so much of what was written at the beginning of this century about the foundations of mathematics.
1990, Reinhardt Grossman, The Fourth Way: A Theory of Knowledge, Indiana University Press, →ISBN, page 227Apeirophobia (fear of infinity) seems here to prod thanatophobia (fear of death) and necrophobia (fear of corpses) into being and later nonbeing, […]
1999, Spencer Golub, Infinity (Stage), University of Michigan, published 2001, →ISBN, page 14Wiener’s explanation would predict that apeirophobia creeps up in younger stages of life, and although we cannot know anything for sure without sufficient data, the reports scattered across the web seem to roughly match this concept. But there does seem to be a small percentage of people with apeirophobia who first experienced fear even before adolescence, such as myself.
2016 September 1, Bobby Azarian, “Apeirophobia: The Fear of Eternity”, in The Atlantic, archived from the original on 18 Oct 2017
Origin
Cite this entry
apeirophobia. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/apeirophobia
“apeirophobia.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/apeirophobia. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “apeirophobia,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/apeirophobia.
Source: apeirophobia on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.