The term 'workaholism' is a modern, analogical coinage from the mid-20th century. It is constructed by blending the Old English root 'work' with the suffix '-holism', extracted from 'alcoholism'. The logic is explicitly metaphorical, comparing an obsessive compulsion to labor with an addiction to a substance. The suffix '-ism' then solidifies this comparison into a named condition or behavioral pattern. Thus, the word's formation tells a clear story: it pathologizes excessive work by framing it through the established medical and social understanding of addiction.

Structure: work (activity) + ahol (from 'alcohol') + ism (state or doctrine) - work: From Old English 'weorc', meaning "something done, action, deed." It functions as the core semantic root, denoting labor or activity. - ahol: A clipped and adapted form from the word 'alcohol', used here by analogy to imply a condition of addiction or dependence. Its functional role is to modify the root 'work' to suggest a pathological relationship to it. - ism: A suffix from Greek '-ismos', via Latin and French, denoting a state, condition, doctrine, or characteristic behavior. It functions to nominalize the preceding concept into a defined condition or practice.