section_path: Addiction and the humanities/The suffixes "-holic" and "-holism"
section_name: The suffixes "-holic" and "-holism"
paragraph_text: The suffixes "-holic" and "-holism"
  
  In contemporary modern English "-holic" is a suffix that can be added to a subject to denote an addiction to it. It was extracted from the word alcoholism (one of the first addictions to be widely identified both medically and socially) (correctly the root " alcohol " plus the suffix "-ism") by misdividing or rebracketing it into "alco" and "-holism". There are correct medico-legal terms for such addictions: dipsomania is the medico-legal term for alcoholism; other examples are in this table: