One thing that bugs me to no end is how people attach -holic to everything to say they really like something. Chocoholic and workaholic are prime examples.
These "words" really get under my skin!! When people say "Joe is a real workaholic" I instantly think to myself, "Oh, Joe must be addicted to a substance called workahol." There is no such thing as workahol or chocohol.
When people use these words it just makes me want to scream!! Am I alone in my hatred of this use of language? It's enough to drive me to become an alcoholic!
You may not be happy to learn that this suffix is in the dictionary, making it fair and grammatically correct game for people to create new words to get under your skin. You may as well start drinking.
Any idea when this happened? I'm guessing it's new. I always thought that alcohol was a word and that -ic was its suffix. So now the word "alcohol" has been broken in half and put with -ic to make a new suffix? Is this common?
I'll be stopping off at the liquor store. (j/k I don't even drink)
Adding "oholic" doesn't bother me too much because it is fairly descriptive. Poor imagination on most journalist's part and naming everyone the Czar of this and the Czar of that (Treasury Czar, Defence Czar, etc.) now that's annoying!
Let this join the several other prolific combining elements that result from a historically faulty word division: -burger (e.g. cheeseburger, steakburger); -copter (e.g. gyrocopter, copter, minicopter).