Derived from the Ancient
Greek βάσις (Bathos, “step”) and φόβος (phobos, “fear”) it can be defined in at least
two ways:
1 The fear of stairs or steep slopes;
2 The fear of walking;
Usually it is taken to mean the fear of stairs or steep slopes and, in some cases, this fear can be so acute that merely seeing stairs or a steep
slope can induce a panic attack.
Donald Trump is said to suffer from bathmophobia which probably explains why he holds the handrail tightly when negotiating
stairs. It might be
interesting to see what would happen if he was on a
set of transparent, open-plan stairs with no handrail.