An alternative adjectival form meaning averse to or harmed by direct sunlight, typically used in botanical or biological classification.
From Greek helios (sun) + -phobous (an adjectival suffix meaning fearing or avoiding, similar to -phobic). This -ous variant is more common in scientific Latin nomenclature.
In botanical Latin, heliophobous is the more technical term you'd find in scientific classifications—so when you see a plant described this way in a research paper, it's telling you it evolved in shaded environments like rainforest understories!
Complete word intelligence in one call. Free tier — 50 lookups/day.