Nomophobia

What it means:Life is a catalogue of catastrophes: your house repossessed; your wife running off with your bank manager. But these disasters pale before the most dreaded tragedy of all: losing your mobile. For most of us, the thought of going without it for an hour gives us cold sweats. A day without it and we start to feel dizzy and nauseous. An entire week – well, that's the cue for panic attacks, fever and psychosis. Nomophobia is the fear of having no mobile phone – without our little hand-held smartphone, we're bereft, bewildered and bawling our eyes out on the Dart.

Where it comes from: Mobile phones started as a fun and handy gadget to have, but now they've evolved into an essential. We hold, cradle, caress them and check our pockets every 90 seconds to make sure they're still there. When we lose ours, we can't ask a stranger to borrow their mobile – it would be like asking to borrow their liver – so we drift around in a telephonic limbo, our umbilical cord to the life network completely severed. The only logical step is to have the next-generation smartphones surgically attached, so we never leave it behind again.

How to say it:"Hi, God, St Peter here. There's a guy here with nomophobia – won't come through the gates without his iPhone."