The Complexity of Xenophobia

xenophobia is the irrational hatred of foreigners, and hydrophobia is a sickness caught from dogs, bats, etc, that you may know as "la rage". La rage est causée par un virus de la famille des Rhabdoviridae et du genre.

Xenophobia is not irrational hatred of foreigners. Xenophobia is irrational fear of foreigners whose manifestations can often include dislike or even hatred but those qualities are not the definition of xenophobia.

Hydrophobia can refer to aquaphobia, a particular stage of rabies or the chemical aversion in a molecule.

xenophobia:

fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)

extreme dislike or fear of foreigners, their customs, their religions, etc. (Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)

intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries. (Compact Oxford English Dictionary)

Them's good enough for me!

Not for me, I tend to resist colloquial revisionism a bit more and think the word loses a great deal of its utility in expressing a very specific subset of contempt in addition to the specific irrationality of fear.




But yes, you make the valid point that its used more like "racism" for countries these days and I wouldn't be so pedantic about it if it weren't a thread about the inherent "complexity" of the word/concept.