Talk:addict
Latest comment: 17 years ago by Kappa
In usage, is "addict" truly a verb at all?
Let's examine how we use this word in English. "Tony is addicted to drugs." This could be viewed as either a passive transitive use of a verb or simply as an adjective. Attempting to use "addict" in the active, however, does not work. Neither "drugs addicted Tony" nor "Joe addicted Tony to drugs" is used in English. What we would say is "Joe got Tony addicted to drugs," and, in this usage, "addicted" is an adjective.
I find the transitive examples given in the article obsolete as well, and have not seen or heard the word used in this way in any recent usage. I would like feedback on this.
- I tried a google books search for "will addict" and "has addicted" and I found things like "these six cigarette companies peddle a drug which has addicted more than a dozen times as many Americans as have heroin and cocaine combined" [1] or "Thai women deported from Japan also report that the gangs will addict girls to drugs in order to manage them more easily" [2]. Kappa 02:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)