Phobias!

fear 恐怖
afraid おそれる・こわがる
phobia　恐怖症

I have a fear of spiders.
I am afraid of spiders.
I have arachnophobia.

All of these sentences mean that spiders scare me. However, arachnophobia is more serious. People with arachnophobia might scream, panic, sweat, or have heart problems if they are near spiders. Even seeing a picture of a spider might make them nervous.

In English, normally we say "I'm afraid of　～."
And we can ask other people "Are you afraid of  ～?"

Phobias are more extreme. They are mental disorders. The names of phobias usually come from Greek. So, in Greek "arachne," means spider, and "phobia," means fear. There are many many phobias. Some commonly known ones are:

Agorophobia- fear of public places or open spaces
Claustrophobia- fear of small spaces or being closed in
Mysophobia- fear of germs or dirt
Acrophobia- fear of heights
Zoophobia- fear of animals

For many of them (such as zoophobia, sociophobia, philophobia, frigophobia, etc), we don't need to know Greek to understand the meaning. We know other English words with the same Greek roots- Zoo, zoology, society, sociology, philanthropy, philosophy, refrigerator, frigid, etc. So it is easy to figure out the meaning!  For example, "frigophobia," means...fear of being cold. Lots of English words come from Greek.

So, what are you afraid of? Do you have any phobias?
I'm afraid of heights and spiders, but I don't think I have any phobias.