I hate cavalier coinage of words. The English language has enough inanity without making up words such as those I rail against today: workaholic, chocoholic, and all their little similarly bastardized friends—shopaholic, sexaholic, etc.

Here are some facts everyone knows:

• Workaholic and chocoholic are based on the word alcoholic.
• An alcoholic is someone who is addicted to alcohol.
• So-called workaholics and chocoholics are people who are supposedly addicted to work and chocolate, respectively.

And there you have the crux of my loathing. If an alcoholic is addicted to alcohol, then workaholics and chocoholics should be addicted to workahol and chocohol, not work and chocolate. As some of you might already know, there’s no such thing as workahol or any of the other “ahols.” Where is the “hol” coming from? If these terms referred to people who drank while they worked, shopped, or whatever, then I would understand, but no; “hol” has just been borrowed willy nilly from alcohol. Why not potaholic or crackaholic? Everyone who wishes there were such a thing as crackahol, raise your hand.

If I am addicted to Challah, the delicious Jewish egg bread, am I a Challaholic? No! Because there’s no such thing as Challahol. If I plant hollyhock everywhere I can, am I a hollyhockaholic? No! Because there’s no such thing as hollyhockahol. What if I constantly sing, hum, or whistle the Mary Poppins tune, “Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious?” If you can’t finish my thought, you must be a bit dumb-diddle-diddle-diddle-um-diddle-ay.

Let me be perfectly clear about the focus of my detestation. I have no problem with the word alcoholic. Well, actually, I do, but for sociological and psychological reasons—not anything semantic, which, I feel compelled to point out, is not a person addicted to semant. Moreover, this rant refrains (almost) from addressing the whole issue of whether or not work or chocolate can literally be an addiction. I’ll only point out that if work is addictive, how come more of us aren’t into it? Words you’ve never heard: “Hey, man, wanna come over Saturday night? I scored some really primo work.”

Furthermore, I’m not going down the path of what happened to the “late” in chocolate? Or puzzling over the perplexing issue of why some “holics” are attached with an “a,” as in work-a-holic, when alcoholic has an “o” before “holic.” Do these coiners of words that make no sense also make up their own twisted rules, i.e., o after c and a after k?

I do not have a problem with the coinage of nonsense words, such as supercaliwhatever. My sole raison d’hatred here is the abhorrent, not to mention aberrant, thinking that it’s clever to apply “aholic” (or “oholic” as the case may be) to any old thing that people like to do. Such coinage is linguistically irresponsible, semantically reprehensible, and a bunch of other junk like that.

Please help stamp out this trend. Is it so much trouble to say, “I love, love, love chocolate”—all the more effective when said with a mouth full of devil’s food—or, “my spouse works so much it’s not healthful”? Speaking of which, what if I am a hopeless sucker for people who work all the time, does that make me a workaholicoholic?

Can’t you see how out of hand this could get? Do you want to look back some day and think, “I could have done something, but I didn’t listen”? Of course you don’t. Don’t be an apathyaholic. Rise up! Speak up! Or, if it’s all you can manage, at least shut up when tempted to slip into aholicspeak. See how easy it is to coin a word?

Perhaps you think I’m just a bitter old lexicoholic, grousing over nothing. You’ll think differently when you, your child, or someone you know needs help with an assignment from a class that combines military history and pop art: “Compare and contrast War-aholism with Warhol-aholism.” Not convinced? Then consider this: Someday the exquisitely elegant phrase, “party animal,” might become obsolete, replaced by, “rollicking frolicoholic.” I know none of us wants that, now do we? Down with aholic-ism!

Credits: Carol