Koumpounophobia is the fear of buttons. Steve Jobs had it — or at least a strong aversion, which explained his affinity for touch-screens and turtlenecks. So do an estimated one of every 75,000 people alive today.
Your correspondent was only recently made aware of the phenomenon when a friend, K of Cambridge, requested that I refrain from wearing buttoned shirts in his presence. ‘A minor quirkiness with buttons,’ he confessed over email, while we were planning a rendezvous. ‘They make me very mildly uncomfortable.’
I turned straight to Google: ‘fear of buttons’. There it was: koumpounophobia, from the modern Greek koumpi (‘to button up’), with case studies, digital fora offering solidarity among sufferers, and adverts for hypnotists to address the matter.
‘Are you koumpounophobic?’ I wrote back.
K replied, ‘I had to look that up.’ He hadn’t known the term either, and had spent 30 years believing himself a lone freak.
‘I wouldn’t call it a phobia,’ he said, ‘but I don’t like to look at them, don’t like them touching my skin or knowing they’re even there.
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