Question by Gregory Valentini: Why do people think “oholic” is a suffix for addiction?
If someone is addicted to alcohol they are called an alcoholic, why? Because the suffix “ic” is from the Latin adjectival ending -icus, -ica, -icum. Which means “pertaining to” or “characteristic of. So a person who is an alcoholic is a person characterized by alcohol.
“ohol” comes from alcohol. It is not a suffix.
So shouldn’t people say “workic” for someone who loves working, or “rageic” for someone who loves to be enraged? etc…?
Best answer:
Answer by Morgan
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.