Claustrophobic means terrified of closed spaces, or making you feel so. Claustrophobic in lifts, a claustrophobic room, claustrophobic and dark.
It works both ways, since a person can be claustrophobic and a room can be, which is unusual for a word of this kind. Scanners are the commonest real difficulty, and open ones exist for exactly that reason.
1adjectiveclaustrophobicTerrified of closed spaces, or making you feel so.
“The tiny lift made me feel claustrophobic, so I took the stairs.”
claustrophobic is a quality.
From claustrophobia, from Latin claustrum, an enclosed place, plus Greek phobos, fear.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)kleh₂w-
Latin
claustrum — a shut-in place
English
claustrophobia
English, today
claustrophobic
From claustrophobia + ic. claustrophobia comes from Latin claustrum (“a shut-in place”), from claudō + -phobia. First attested in the British Medical Journal.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA