10 Things You Never Knew About Pennywise
6. Pennywise Helped Popularize Coulrophobia
Though not recognized by the World Health Organization or the American Psychiatric Association, coulrophobia is the fear of clowns. In popular culture, its roots are usually traced back to It’s publication, which kicked off the whole “evil clown” archetype.
Further examples include The Joker from the Batman series, bands such as Twiztid and Insane Clown Posse and movies such as Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988), The Clown At Midnight (1999) and Killjoy (2000). Stressing that the “possibly facetious” term has no basis in actual psychology, the Online Etymology Dictionary suggests otherwise.
“Coulrophobia looks suspiciously like the sort of thing idle pseudo-intellectuals invent on the internet,” the site claims, “and which every smarty pants takes up thereafter. Perhaps it is a mangling of modern Greek klooun, which is the English word borrowed into Greek.”