araneophobe

plural araneophobes

1. rareSynonym of arachnophobe.

   The computer stand was a giant spider, and Sam sat down on the fuzzy seat, a smaller version of the same spider. All the hairy legs around him made him uncomfortable, as he was a bit of an araneophobe.

   2009, Jim Musgrave, “The Web of Love”, in The Mayan Magician and Other Stories, San Diego, Calif.: CIC Publishers, →ISBN, page 234

   2 more examples

   Headlamp gleaming, he [Willis J. Gertsch] has spent nights searching for specimens [of spiders] in such unlikely places as high-altitude peaks in the Rocky Mountains, Mexican deserts alive with scorpions, and a tropic island in the Panama Canal Zone. This sort of thing has been going on for more than 20 years, ever since Gertsch first caught the spider bug in college. He’s even more enraptured now than when he started, so much so that he usually works 2 hours or so at home every day after office hours. To the general public, araneophobes all (just plain scared of spiders), such devotion is incomprehensible.

   1955 November 12, William E. Oriol, “Who’s Afraid Of Spiders?: Many People Are, But Not This Ramsey Scientist, Who Is Fascinated By Them”, in Bergen Evening Record, volume 61, number 136, Hackensack, N.J., page 4

   Spiders are all predatory, some even cannibalistic; they may be grotesque, even hideous to look at – although some are extraordinarily beautiful. But they are also artisans, and it is this trait which captivates the interest of the most hardened araneophobe.

   1976, Barbara York Main, Spiders (The Australian Naturalist Library), Sydney: William Collins Publishers, →ISBN, page 12

   Synonyms: arachnophobe