shopaholic

nounB2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — shop sits at #714neutral

A shopaholic is a person who simply cannot stop buying things. A bit of a shopaholic, confessions of a shopaholic, she is a shopaholic.

It is light-hearted and half a joke, which is why the serious version is called compulsive buying instead. The -aholic ending came off alcoholic and now attaches to almost any habit.

Definitions of shopaholic

1nounshopaholicA person who simply cannot stop buying things.B2
“Her sister is a shopaholic with three wardrobes to prove it.”

shopaholic is a person.

Where it comes from

Middle English
schoppe
English
shop
English, today
shopaholic

Built from

*skup- · Proto-Germanic — barn, shed
*skup- · Proto-Indo-European — to bend, bow, curve, vault

From shop + -aholic. shop comes from Middle English schoppe. From Middle English shoppe, schoppe, from Old English sċoppa (“shed; booth; stall; shop”), from Proto-Germanic skupp-, skup- (“barn, shed”), from Proto-Indo-European skub-, skup- (“to bend, bow, curve, vault”). Cognate with Dutch schop (“shed”), German Schuppen (“shed”), German Schober (“barn”), French échoppe (“booth, shop”) (< Germanic). The verb is denominal. The noun senses “act of shopping”, “purchased items” are backformed from the verb.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

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