Eggcorn Forum

Claustrophobia is built on the L. infinitive claudere, “to close, confine, imprison” and is the fear of being in a confined space. The same root gave rise to cloister and to close. Cluster, on the other hand, seems to come from the same root as “to clot”, i.e. to join together closely. Clusterophobia as an eggcorn for claustrophobia gets the same idea across. Note that the eggcorn does not refer to those people specifically frightened of or enraged by clustered objects.

A tourist’s report on Italy
An infinite number of churches adore Venice, prominent among them are Chiesa dei Frari, Chiesa Della Salute…. Glasswere is famous as the masks, but beware, shop around before choosing a shop, but then this imposes another big problem. The streets are so narrow, with high buildings that make you get all pangs of clusterophobia, that you would think GPSs help. [...] And dont miss the bridge of sights, just for the sake of it…
(www.cis.hut.fi/karthik/pdfs/Italy.pdf)

The Bridge of Sights! Classic. And “adore” for adorn was used more than once.

Blog
I’ve been having some sort of psychological problems… pannic attack or clusterophobia would they be called…
(http://bahades.deviantart.com/journal/?offset=20)

Survival forum
Clusterophobia is defined as fear of tight places like elevators.
(http://forums.equipped.org/ubbthreads.p … mber=56321)

Airline complaints board
the ENTIRE TIME, the man just had his chair bent back ALL THE WAY. with little space in front of me, i couldn’t even move my legs, or even yet breathe due to clusterphobia.
(http://www.complaintsboard.com/complain … 49410.html)

Apparently there was once an entry on the Database about “closetphobia”, but I couldn’t find it on the page the search function sent me to. The original citations, then, may be lost unless someone knows where they are. I didn’t find any closetphobics on the web, except for intentional uses. There were a few closetrophobics that look genuine:

Modified car forum from Australia
I was dissapointed in the car ultimately, It’s performance from It’s souped up VW counterwieghted crank bull-s*** motor, was only ever going to be average, and the driving position, which I thought would be exciting, turned out to be closetrophobic, and awkward to operate the pedals
(http://www.autocult.com.au/Post.aspx?id=85)

Review of London Hotel by Indian traveller
Very small rooms without even a hairdryer, looking at next building creates a dark and closetrophobic atmosphere…I can barely walk in my room
(snippet from somewhere in 120000 comments on www.tripadvisor.in/AllReviews-g186338-L … gland.html)

Filipina personal profile
BIGGEST FEAR: closetrophobic (afraid of small closed spaces)
(http://www.myspace.com/dyehnie)