Ask Lemmy

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

No, because I know what the suffix means.

Just remember that the average Lemmy user is a bit more literate than the average kneejerk reaction idiot. Id say theres nothing wrong with it but you can probably come up with something a little more catchy and clever if you put your mind to it.

Phile is pretty much the best known greek suffix out there. It gets tagged onto most hobbies, so you don't have to worry about it being defaulted to sexual matters. Tbh, most of the paraphilias are so obscure that nobody without an interest in the field is going to know them the way -phobias are. I mean, can you name the other chronophilias besides pedophilia? Did you even know that there were others? Most people really only know one or two sexual-philias at most, where they'll have heard of a dozen or so non sexual ones.

But, just tacking phile or philia onto a word can be clunky, so you might end up with it not working well anyway.

“Audiophile” has never before brought to mind the concept of “pedophile”.

In fact, note the way we shorten the word: “pedo”.

I wouldn't worry about it. But I’m autistic, so the way my brain processes these words might be different than an NT’s brain.

Mostly I think it’s only going to be a problem for people who are looking for trouble, and you can’t really avoid problems with those people.

There is audiophile. It refers to someone who is obsessed about audio quality.

Only dumb people will

It really depends. I think -phile tends to make me think non-sexual, and -philia makes me think sexual. Probably just because of how the words are used.

People tend to be willing to describe themselves as an x-phile, but psychological or legal literature are more likely to say something like "a person with x-philia" or "displaying traits of x-philia".

I assume the people who automatically think of something negative or sexual when hearing the word „phile“ are the same people you don’t want to associate with in the first place. Their opinion is worthless and can be ignored. Don’t waste your time with other people’s ignorance.

I'd simply guess "lover, liker, fond of", without any obligatory sexual connotation. Even if I don't recognise the first part, as in... say, "wugphile" ("wug" is just a nonsense placeholder).

I have some interest in chemistry and after a while when I hear "phile" my first thought is "they are attracted to water".

I don't know if this is international but it's a common joke in British media to use this as a bit of a joke, for example a geeky character might say that they're a bibliophile, and the dumb character will make it sexual.

There's only two words with the 'phile' ending that is sexual that I can think of. But audiophile, videophile, and a host of others use that ending in the context of a preference or attraction: nemophile has nothing to do with animated fish, for instance. Hemophilia is another example of a commonplace word that is definitely not sexual.

I want to think the average person knows there's no sex in halophilia, but we could be overestimating.

Not necessarily, it depends on whether I recognize the first part of the word. For example, I dont immediately think "audiophile," is negative or sexual in nature.

Nah, I just assume it's someone that really likes something. Kind of like saying food-porn but even less sexual. Like Audiophile is common parlance that evokes no sexual meaning.

Nah it's okay. Anglophile doesn't mean you want to bang me.

Audiophile

I would understand that it just means a connoisseur of something, but you could always change the spelling to "file" to make it more digital-y and even less associated with problematic obsessions.

Is it “furryphile”? Then yeah, they’ll think it’s sexual.

Nope.

No. There's plenty of common examples of that suffix being used in a non-sexual non-negative context. For example: someone who enjoys reading books is called a bibliophile, there's also the youtube channels Computerphile and Numberphile.