shakatany: Sleeping woman plus moon and stars (Barbarella icon)
shakatany ([personal profile] shakatany) wrote2009-02-13 02:21 pm

Friday the Thirteenth

Well today is Friday the 13th and, upon signing in at LJ, discovered there was a specific word for the fear of it: paraskavedekatriaphobia. I went to Wikipedia which states:

The fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskavedekatriaphobia,[1][2] a word derived from the concatenation of the Greek words Paraskeví (Παρασκευή) (meaning Friday), and dekatreís (δεκατρείς) (meaning thirteen), attached to phobía (φοβία) (meaning fear). This is a specialized form of triskaidekaphobia, a simple phobia (fear) of the number thirteen, and is also known as friggatriskaidekaphobia. The term triskaidekaphobia was derived in 1911 and first appeared in a mainstream source in 1953...According to folklorists, there is no written evidence for a "Friday the 13th" superstition before the 19th century.

Oh how I love to google and find answers so quickly compared to the old days of running to the library to look things up. A world of knowledge is truly at my fingertips. As more and more people are hooked up to the internet I think there may be a fundamental shift in our way of thinking and doing things, hopefully for the better.