Quote:
|
Quote by: Chancellor Let's break it (homophobia) down into its component parts:
Homo = same (the Greek word "homo") or any of a genus of hominids (the Latin "homo")
+ Phobia = fear of
Fear of the same or fear of hominids
Hence, "homophobe" is a person who fears the same or fears other hominids. |
I'm not going to weigh in on this debate with a precise definition of the word "homophobe", but I think it should be noted that you cannot "derive" the meaning of a word from the meaning its component parts (once) had. For example, a "fag" was once a bunch of sticks, and a bunch of sticks only. Now it has an additional meaning. Etymology can certainly be used to gain insights about how the present meaning of a certain word evolved, but the kind of brute force analysis you're using is naive at best, grossly misleading at worst. There's a reason linguists differentiate between synchronic and diachronic approaches.