[ Chrysti the Wordsmith ]

Radio Script > Brontophobia/Brontosaurus

A person suffering from brontophobia may spend his days obsessively watching the skies or listening to the weather report. If dark clouds accumulate on the horizon, he becomes anxious, growing increasingly fearful of any impending storm. The brontophobe may even hide under a bed or in a closet as the threatening weather approaches, refusing to move until the tempest is long past.

People with brontophobia have an abnormal, persistent fear of thunder. The bronto in brontophobia comes from bronte, the Greek word for thunder.

This word shares etymological kinship with the name of a the ponderous Jurassic behemoth, the brontosaurus. At 70 feet in length with enormous, pillar- like legs, it was named brontosaurus, or "thunder lizard" in 1879, the year its first gigantic fossil was discovered in Wyoming. Paleontologists re-christened the dinosaur apatosarus in 1978, but its more evocative original moniker, was given to suggest the booming sound of its locomotion: like thunder.

Another prehistoric creature in the same etymological family but less well known than the brontosaurus, was the brontotherium, an Oligocene mammal living in North America about 35 million years ago. Fossil remains suggest a stocky, rhino-like herbivore. Weighing 5 tons and standing 8 feet at the shoulder, the creature was given the name brontotherium, "thunder beast."

[ CPB ]

[ The Tundra Club ]

[ Zoot Enterprises ]

[ Stuart Weber ]