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addict

nounadjectiveverbcommon in dialogue

  • //ˈæd.ɪkt//
  • //əˈdɪkt//

A person who is addicted, especially to a harmful drug.

noun

  1. 1

    A person who is addicted, especially to a harmful drug.

    a heroin addict

    He is an addict when it comes to chocolate cookies.

    Those nonaddicts who picked a winning card had increased blood flow to the striatum, but the gambling addicts who picked the right card had much less of it (their reward system was less active).

    A stressful environment in which there is ready access to drugs can trump a low genetic risk of addiction in these animals. The same may be true for humans, too. And that’s a notion many find hard to believe: Just about anyone, regardless of baseline genetic risk, can become an addict under the right circumstances.

  2. 2

    An adherent or fan (of something).

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂éd Proto-Italic *ad Proto-Italic *ad- Latin ad- Proto-Indo-European *deyḱ- Proto-Indo-European *déyḱeti Proto-Italic *deikō Latin dīcō Latin addīcō Latin addictusbor. English addict Borrowed from Latin addictus, past participle of addīcō (“deliver; devote; surrender”), from ad- (“to, towards, at”) + dīcō (“say; declare”)

adjective

  1. 1

    archaicAddicted.

  2. 2

    obsoleteBound, tied to, obligated.

verb

  1. 1

    To deliver (someone or something) following a judicial decision.

  2. 2

    archaicTo devote (oneself) to a given activity, occupation, thing etc.

    They addict themselves to the civil law.

    Having resided some time in this place, we returned to the other country-house which we had left, where lord B— addicted himself so much to hunting, and other male diversions, that I began to think he neglected me […].

  3. 3

    obsoleteTo bind (a person or thing) to the service of something.

  4. 4

    obsoleteTo devote or pledge (oneself) to a given person, cause etc.

  5. 5

    archaicTo devote (one's mind, talent etc.) to a given activity, occupation, thing etc.

    That part of mankind that addict their minds to speculations.

  6. 6

    To make (someone) become devoted to a given thing or activity; to cause to be addicted.

    His genius addicted him to the study of antiquity.

Forms

plural
addicts
comparative
more addict
superlative
most addict
past tense
addicted
past participle
addicted
present participle
addicting
third person singular
addicts
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).