Whatever the roots of this irrational fear, it undoubtedly represents a very real concern to many people, so much so that a 1993 article in the British Medical Journal investigated the relation between ‘health, behaviour and superstition surrounding Friday the 13th in the United Kingdom’. The study reported the surprising finding that, despite the fact that fewer people chose to travel on Friday 13th, there were significantly more hospital admissions due to accidents than there were on ‘normal’ Fridays. Whether this is coincidence or not, the fact remains that many of us would confess some degree of anxiety about Friday the 13th, deliberately rejecting it as a day for significant life events like marriage or moving house.
It is therefore not surprising that a term for referring to this fear, albeit rather unwieldy, has been coined in English. The noun derivative paraskevidekatriaphobe refers to someone who suffers from the condition, and paraskevidekatriaphobic can be used either as an adjective or as an alternative means of referring to a sufferer.
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