… many people’s reaction to the cartoon psychiatrist (in my 4/20 posting “Charlie on the couch”) admitting to her patient Charlie the StarKist tunafish:
you’re my first patient with a fear of not being eaten
Well, not an everyday word, but a specialized medical term, a bit of arcana from abnormal psychology.
There are, remarkably, two terms (one using the Latin ‘devour’ stem, one the corresponding Greek ‘eat’ stem) for ‘fear of being eaten’, so from these we can compose terms for ‘fear of not being eaten’.
Here you will object that this is a profoundly silly exercise; surely, such a term would have no utility in the real world. But no, there turns out to be a documented paraphilia centered on a erotic desire to be eaten (in the imagination), and in the world of this kink — very far from a top paraphilia, but a real thing — fear of not being eaten, of not having this desire satisfied, would also be a real thing.
And now, adventures in the classical (Latin- and Greek-based) morphology of English, in which we discover that Charlie the StarKist tunafish is an invorarephobic (going the Latin way) or an aphagophobic (going the Greek way).
The Latin route. We start with the desire:
vorarephilia ‘erotic desire to be eaten (alive or swallowed whole)’ (< Latin vorare ‘to swallow, devour’ + Greek φιλία (philía ‘love’)
(There’s a rather chaotic Wikipedia page on vorarephilia.)
From this, since if there’s a philia there can be a phobia:
vorarephobia ‘fear of being eaten’
And then, with the Latin negative prefix in-,
invorarephobia ‘fear of not being eaten’
adj. invorarephobic ‘afraid of not being eaten’
noun invorarephobic ‘someone [like Charlie] who’s afraid of not being eaten’
The Greek route. Using the Greek ‘eat’ stem:
phagophilia ‘erotic desire to be eaten’
phagophobia ‘fear of being eaten’
And then, with the Greek negative prefix a-,
aphagophobia ‘fear of not being eaten’
adj. aphagophobic ‘afraid of not being eaten’
noun aphagophobic ‘someone [like Charlie] who’s afraid of not being eaten’
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