Why do they call addicts ‘AHOL’ ics? Alcoholic comes from ALCOHOL. Remove “alcohol” and you get IC. JUST IC. JUST IC,
JUST IC! NOT AHOL-ic, (which by the way is a misspelling. It should be OHOL-ic.) If I am addicted to salt, I’m a SALTIC, not a saltAHOLIC. If I’m addicted to sex then I’m a sexic, not a sexAHOLIC. And I’m not a rageAHOLIC, I’m a ragIC.
Of course I realize that my “new” phrases sounds really stupid, but chocaholic is stupid too. What, are you addicted to chocolate, but only chocolate smotherd in alcohol? I’m sure some people could be, but seriously, where does the “AHOL” come from. Is there some latin word I am missing.
And please don’t call me an “A hol” I know. I know.
“Aholic” actually was taken from the term “alcoholic”. Before that, it didn’t exist.
Dictionary definition:
*-aholic - abstracted from alcoholic first for workaholic (1968). Subsequent formations include chocoholic, first attested 1976, and shopaholic (1984). *
also, from Making Sense of Neologisms (by Isabel Verdaguar):
My point is, “ic” is no more valid that “aholic”. The bit of the word “alcoholic” that is used is the “aholic” part. This has then been appended to the end of other words, such as choc or shop, to mean an addiction to something.
The reason for “aholic” being used is that it derives directly from “alcoholic”. Hope this is clearer. I’m getting confused myself, now.
You know, this happens all the time. For example, the ending -rama was taken from the word “panorama”, which comes from pan, “all,” and horama, “view.” It doesn’t conform to the morpheme boundaries either, but nobody’s died of it yet.
If you’re going to rant against “-aholic,” it seems to me you have to rant against the suffix “-gate” to mean a scandal, and “-burger” to mean a sandwich, cause weren’t they formed pretty much the same way?
I thought -ic had meaning, like having to do with something in an extreme way. Frantic and fanatic are extremely frenzied or extreme fans perhaps?
I like it. Artic! Land for extreme art! Antarctica is the misspeled land for the extreme anti-art. You don’t wan’t Baltic though. You need a hot poker and some tweezers or needle nose pliers or hemostats or even an exacto-knife to deal with those nasty buggers. I know.
Ummm…this rant seems to be saying “hey! this particular slang stands out amongst all the other slang our fellow Americans use, and is unacceptable”!
Aholic, or oholic if you prefer, is basically a slang term that passed into common usage and as someone else in this thread explained (better than I just did), THAT’S why “we all” add aholic as a prefix on items thought to be addicting.
You might as well have included all American slang that was created in this manner in your rant.
