-aholic


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-aholic

or -oholic
suff.
One that is addicted to or compulsively in need of: workaholic; chocoholic.
[From alteration of (alc)oholic.]
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

-aholic

a combining form extracted from alcoholic, used in coinages having the general sense “a person who is addicted to or obsessed with an object or activity,” as specified by the initial element: chargeaholic; foodaholic. Compare -holic.
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
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This chance conversation pointed out to me the power of the suffix -aholic. It has the power to create metaphors out of ordinary words, simply through the chemistry of combining with them.
A cluster of -aholic metaphors has started to creep into our everyday language.
The tenor, or underlying ground, for all the -aholic metaphors is, of course, alcoholic.
This cluster of -aholic metaphors is but one in a series of drug-related and addiction-related metaphors that have crept into our language since the 1960s.
But the metaphor-making suffix -aholic requires one, so I felt obligated to supply one when writing about it.
Perhaps similar dynamics are at work with our other -aholics.
Confessions of a metaphoraholic

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