ailurophobia

Pronounced: aye-loor-uh-FOE-bee-uh (alternative: ay-loor-uh-FOE-bee-uh), noun

Notes: A fear of something, but I could not figure out the word

---

Yesterday’s word

The word chautauqua is “any of various traveling lectures and performances that flourished in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

First usage

Came into usage in the mid-1800s

Background / Comments

The original Chautauqua was started just after the US Civil War at Chautauqua Lake in New York State as an assembly for training church workers. After a while, the program was broadened to include lectures on a wide variety of subjects, as well as entertainment. The event proved so successful that it spawned other chautauquas throughout the US, each offering a mix of education, entertainment, and religion. Chautauquas reached their peak in the 1920s but greatly dwindled by the 1940s. The original institution at Chautauqua Lake still offers an annual program of performances and lectures. I was unaware of this bit of US history, but just after I used this word, I ran across it in an article about a man; he was a speaker at an chautauqua.