What’s the difference between addicting and addictive? Not much, although addictive is the older term. Grant suggests that addicting is more about a quality of the person being affected, whereas if something’s addictive, that’s an inherent property of the substance itself. So if you can’t log off of Netflix, you’d say that Netflix is addicting. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Addicting vs. Addictive”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha.
Who is this?
Hi.
This is Jolene Beanster calling from Hamilton, Ontario.
Hi, Jolene. Welcome to the show.
Well, I have something that I’m hoping you can help with, because it’s kind of been driving me nuts.
And I had to ask my husband about it, and we have the same issue.
If there’s something that, let’s say it’s peanut butter or drugs or something, and you can’t stop enjoying it, you would say that it’s rather, I would say, addictive.
And my childhood and through both of my English degrees, I’ve never been corrected in using the word addictive.
And one day I heard somebody say addicting.
I thought, that’s silly.
That’s the wrong word.
And then I heard more people say it.
And then I heard it on the news.
And then I heard it on the radio.
And now I hear it more than the word addictive.
And I’m starting to think that maybe I was wrong all along and nobody ever corrected me.
And I don’t know if it’s a living in Florida versus Canada thing, because I have moved.
But I’m pretty sure I started hearing it in Florida.
No kidding.
Interesting. Addictive versus addicting.
And they use both of those words for both of the same kinds of things, whether it’s heroin or cannabis?
Yeah, like I don’t know when I would use the word addicting, except maybe if somebody is trying to get you addicted to something, I guess they could be addicting you.
But I’ve heard so many people, and I’ve heard on national and international news and on the radio and everything, say, oh, I love this.
It’s just so addicting, you know.
How interesting.
And it just doesn’t seem right.
I’m not sure there’s much difference in the meaning.
And you’re certainly not wrong to use addictive.
No, addictive is perfectly fine, but I think addicting is probably fine as well.
Okay.
I don’t know if we’re all victim of the recency illusion, though, where it just feels more, a frequency illusion, where it feels more recent and more frequent than it actually is.
I don’t know.
I feel like I got to a certain point in my life when all of a sudden there is this switch, you know?
There’s a little nuance there, at least for me, and I don’t know if I could ever prove this.
I really probably should spend some time looking into this.
The addicting is more about the quality of the person who is being affected, and addictive is more about the thing that is in question, the substance or the drug, what have you.
You can have addicting video games.
I don’t know.
And it’s more about the player being susceptible to it rather than the thing itself being inherently having that quality of causing addiction.
Where heroin has that quality of causing addiction.
Yeah, when you talk about it as an inherent quality, it seems like addictive is a stronger word to me.
Like addicting, it might happen, it might not.
It’s still, you know, but that’s just a gut feeling.
Right, right.
Like it might be used more flippantly.
But morphologically and grammatically, there’s nothing wrong with addicting.
You might prefer addictive for clarity purposes because it’s an older, more established term.
It sounds more clinical to me, more pharmaceutical.
Interesting.
Addicting sounds like you could use it for just about anything.
But I don’t have a problem.
Do you have a problem with addicting?
I mean, you said that your response is to say that it’s wrong.
The only problem I had with it was I didn’t realize it was a word.
Like I hadn’t, because I hadn’t encountered it until I was at a certain point in university.
And then all of a sudden it seemed ubiquitous, you know?
English is just loaded with similar terms for similar things.
I was thinking of instantly and instantaneously.
Oh, yeah, there’s another one.
Just the subtleties there.
Yeah.
It’s morphologically sound.
It is a normal way to make a word in English.
Yeah.
It’s just you have a choice.
If you prefer addictive, go for it.
If you’re an editor, maybe you could strike addicting and use addicting instead in the stuff that you’re editing on behalf of other people.
Yeah, I don’t think there’s a difference.
Well, not being an editor, I will try to stop being affronted by the word addicting.
Thanks for calling, Jolene.
Thank you, guys. Have a great day.
Take care. Bye-bye.
Bye now.
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