-holic

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See also: holič

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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    Back-formation from alcoholic.

    Suffix

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    -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

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    • 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

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    Anagrams

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