holic

Two days ago the textbook had a reading about a course for “speedaholics”. I started simply by writing speedaholic on the board and asking them what they thought it meant. They quickly figured out that it was somehow analogous to alcoholic. One student guessed it referred to cars – a car provides speed in the same way that a drink provides alcohol.

The suffix -(a)holic means “a person who has an addiction to or obsession with some object or activity”. When you think about, it really should be –ic, because alcoholic is alcohol+ic, but no-one would understand speedic etc.

It is impossible to know how many words have been coined on this pattern. Dictionary.com gives the first two as sugarholic and foodoholic, both from 1965. Different websites give different examples, but workaholic, chocoholic and shopaholic are probably the most common. Some are obscure: I had to check who a surgiholic is. English morphology and spelling rules make this word awkward no matter how it is spelled.

The default spelling is now –aholic, with o being used only when there is an o in the root, for example, chocoholic. The early spelling of foodoholic has since been replaced by foodaholic.

I think all of these words cheapen the idea of alcoholism as a serious health issue. Whatever else an emojiholic suffers from, they’re not likely to die decades early, unless they write text messages (?emoji messages) while crossing a road.

I have a strong memory of a class at a language college in Korea in which a student said something like “I don’t drink alcohol. Alcohol makes you holic!”, which was actually a very clever use of language (whether she thought that really was a word and had used it before, or created it on the spot. Alas, I can’t find this in my diary of the time, so I can’t be sure exactly what she said.

PS also on the list of words ending with –holic is catholic, which does not mean someone obsessed with cats (though there are cartoons to that effect.