teleophobia.
Reluctance or refusal to ascribe purpose to natural phenomena.
Meaning & usage
Reluctance or refusal to ascribe purpose to natural phenomena.
Where this word comes from
From German Teleophobie in the late 19th century. The OED considers the word modern Latin, but the earliest appearance is in the writing of Karl Ernst von Baer in German in the 1860s. Whatever the immediate source it can be analyzed as teleo- + -phobia, from Ancient Greek τέλος (télos, “purpose”) + -φοβία (-phobía, “-phobia”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.