epistemophilia means an excessive love of, or striving for, knowledge. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
Why “epistemophilia” is a great word
EPISTEMOPHILIA — [Noun] An excessive, compulsive love of or striving for knowledge, considered in psychoanalytic theory as an instinctual drive. From Ancient Greek ἐπιστήμη (epistḗmē, "knowledge") + φίλια (philía, "love"). Unlike "curiosity," a temperate and open-ended inquiry, or "philosophy," a disciplined study of fundamental truths, epistemophilia is a voracious, libidinal hunger for the act of knowing itself. It is the scholar ruining his eyesight in a forgotten archive, the child dismantling a clock to devour its secret heart, the insomniac mind chasing a single fact down a rabbit hole of footnotes at three in the morning—a quiet tragedy where the drive to accumulate eclipses the consolation of understanding.
Etymology
From Ancient Greek ἐπιστήμη (epistḗmē, “knowledge”) + φίλια (phília, “love”).
noun
- An excessive love of, or striving for, knowledge.
- As used by psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, epistemophilia—or, as she framed it, the "epistemophilic instinct"—is the wish to know, and is rooted in libido. Such instinct results from Oedipal conflicts in the child psyche.