Other forms: alcoholics
Alcoholic means containing the substance that makes people drunk. An alcoholic drink, non-alcoholic, alcoholic strength.
As a noun it names somebody dependent on alcohol, and clinicians now prefer alcohol dependence or alcohol use disorder because the noun labels the person rather than the condition. Help exists and stopping suddenly after heavy long-term use can be dangerous without medical support.
1adjectivealcoholicContaining alcohol.
“No alcoholic drinks are allowed inside the stadium.”
2noundependentSomebody dependent on alcohol.
“Her father was an alcoholic who hadn't gone a day without a drink for years.”
alcoholic is a quality of drink.
Alcohol plus -ic. Alcohol comes from Arabic al-kuhl, which first named a fine powder.
Medieval Latin
alcohol
Middle English
alcofol
English
alcohol
English, today
alcoholic
From alcohol + -ic. First attested 1891, from alcohol + ic. alcohol comes from Middle English alcofol, from Medieval Latin alcohol. 15th century from Middle English alcofol, from Middle French alcohol or Spanish alcohol, derived from the Medieval Latin - rendering alcohol transmitted in medical or alchemical literature of Arabic كحل (“kohl”), which in xaa - also bore the form كُحُول, قُحُول; bearing thus the meaning of stibnite first, then generalized in meaning to a powder obtained by triturating a material, then also to liquids obtained by boiling down, and specialized to mean spirit of wine, ethanol, in the 18th century, then the narrow chemical sense after 1850. a doublet of alcool and kohl. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA