Why this word is great
ICONOMANIA — [Noun] A zealous, often overwhelming obsession with icons and images. From icon, from Greek eikōn (“likeness, image”), combined with the connective -o- and -mania, from Greek mania (“madness, frenzy”). Unlike iconoclasm, which violently rejects images, or iconolatry, which reverently worships them, iconomania describes a secular, acquisitive frenzy for the image as a totem of cultural power. It is the collector’s wall lined with mint-condition figurines, the endless scroll through a digital hoard of a thousand saved portraits, and the pilgrim who photographs a museum’s every painting but sees none—a frantic liturgy to the need to be seen, which leaves only the quiet terror of being unseen without a replica to prove you were there.