As a Greek, I feel the need to protest the corruption of the word cleistophobia (kleisto = closed) into claustrophobia.
Claus- sounds like the root of "to cry" (e.g. clausigelos = crying laughter), so a Greek reading claustrophobia thinks of people who are afraid of crying (though the proper rendering of a word composite with that meaning would be klauthmophobia).
mr_toad|1 year ago
kgeist|1 year ago
>From Latin claustrum (“a shut-in place”), from claudō (“I shut, close; I imprison, confine”) + -phobia. First attested in the British Medical Journal
So it's not a corruption. It's a neologism.