-holic

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See also: holič

English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Back-formation from alcoholic.

Suffix[edit]

-holic

  1. Denotes addiction to the substance or activity of the stem word.
    • 2017, David Friend, The Naughty Nineties:
      Trump was also a horndog, a braggart, and a social-media-holicjust like voters were.

Usage notes[edit]

  • The form -holic is usually used with words already ending with vowels. For stems ending with consonants, the phonetically pleasant forms -aholic or -oholic may be more common.
  • In contemporary modern English "-holic" is a suffix that can be added to a subject to denote an addiction to it. The term is derived from alcoholism, one of the first addictions to be widely identified both medically and socially.
  • There are other more formal terms for such addictions, many uncommonly used. For example, dipsomania, a medico-legal term for alcoholism, is used less than 1% as often as "alcoholism" in a large sample of academic writing over the last 20 years; other examples are given in the following table.
Colloquial term Addiction to Medico-legal term
danceaholic dance choreomania
workaholic work ergomania
sexaholic sex erotomania, satyromania, nymphomania
sugarholic sugar saccharomania

Derived terms[edit]

Anagrams[edit]