CHOCOHOLIC

Chocoholic is one of a number of recent words formed by analogy withalcoholic, a word with an interesting history of its own. Alcohol originally came from two Arabic words: al, or 'the', and kohl, the black eyeliner widely used in Arabic countries. How this came to refer to alcohol is a bit obscure, but the suffix -ic was added at some stage to refer to a person addicted to alcohol. Since then, the word has been chopped about, and the suffix -oholic or -aholic is now added to other words to refer to various kinds of addiction.

The commonest of these is workaholic, someone unable or unwilling to stop working. The most widely used words occurring with 'workaholic' are 'he', 'husband', 'father', 'man' and 'men', suggesting that most workaholics are men, or are believed to be men.

Chocoholic, is another common variant of 'alcoholic', and can be spelled 'chocaholic' or even 'choc-a-holic'. However it is spelled, it would seem from the way the word is used that most are women; as are many shopaholics.

The -oholic suffix is often used to generate new words for humorous effect. For example, a driver unwilling to leave his car behind has been described as a ,diesel-holic. In addition, it has been said of the Rangers manager Dick Advocaat that he is a 'football-holic'. Is it any longer safe to assume that most football-holics are men?

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