Sometimes it's helpful to be able to describe correctly your particular deviancy. For the pervert set adrift in a sea of semantics and societal rejection, I offer the following little list:
- Agathophilia: the love of goodness and virtue; a sure recipe for a boring sex life.
- Bibliophilia: the love of books. Mostly harmless. For anyone who's ever entered a library and wondered why the pages were sticky, not nearly as innocent as it sounds.
- Hippophilia: the love of horses, a driving force in the porn underworld. I won't add every animal; just look up the Greek root and add -philia. For example, ornithophilia, the love of birds (aren't they a little small?).
- Kakophilia: the love of evil, made famous by Ming the Merciless.
- Necrophilia: the love of the dead. Often associated with the love of the restless dead. Hence the Egyptologist, whose name eludes me now, of the former half of this century who claimed she picked all her digs from suggestions given to her by her undead pharaoh lover.
- Philology: the love of words or reason, and my particular passion. Modern dictionaries are just being insulting when they equate this with linguistics.
- Philosophy: the love of wisdom, otherwise known as the only way the proverbially hideous Socrates and Sappho (described as fat, squat, and swarthy) got anybody to sleep with them.
- Technophilia: the love of engineering, not to be confused with technetophilia, the love of engineers.
- Xenophilia: the love of strangers. You could probably make this a euphemism for prostitution, or at least a penchant for one night stands.
- Zoophilia: the love of animals in general; kinda makes you wonder about all those PETA people, huh?
I hope this has helped at least some of the
confused and star-crossed closet lovers out there; it's nice to describe to your
psychiatrist exactly what's wrong with you with one word.