Would you think of words that you don't know, ending with "phile" as something sexual (or negative)?

cosmicrookie@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 61 points –

I am looking for a name for an idea that I have for a website. It is a niche hobby, but there is a greek word for it that most people don't know. Lets say its a book club and the word was Bibliophile or a music club called Melophile.

Would you, if you did not know the meaning, think of it as something sexual, or maybe even something bad? I am nervous that users might relate it to pedophile even though that is just one of, (but maybe best known) philias there are

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When I hear "audiophile", I truly never think about licking the banana-plugs, so nope.

There are also some popular YT channels like Computerphile and Numberphile

Yeah another user mentioned those two too. The interesting part is that they have used a mixture of english and greek. For example Numberphile uses the enlish word "number" instead of the proper Arithmophile. I wonder if this is to make it easier to understand

The reason that a linguist would give is that -phile has become a somewhat productive suffix in English, so it is not constrained to Greek roots.