A few weeks ago, I mentioned a man who died by drowning in chocolate. There was another unusual death in this article on the BBC website a few days ago. The article mentions that the lady was a ‘shopaholic‘. A ‘shopaholic’ is someone who is addicted to shopping. We often use the suffix ‘-holic’ to talk about people who are addicted to things. Here are a few other common examples:
- workaholic
- alcoholic
- chocoholic
There were some other interesting words in the article. The author mentions that the elderly lady lived in a ‘bungalow‘. This means a house with only one storey or level.
In the fourth paragraph, there is an interesting phrase:
Her friend Roy Moran said the 77-year-old started shopping to escape youths who once plagued her home.
In this sentence ‘plagued’ means that the youths constantly annoyed her or caused trouble in the area. The are two more interesting expressions later on where the author writes:
He visited her bungalow in Rosgill Close four days later and found the side door ajar, but the premises was stacked from floor to ceiling with “bric-a-brac“.
When a door is ‘ajar’ it is a little bit open but not fully open and ‘bric-a-brac’ is small objects with no real function or value. We could call small souvenirs and ornaments ‘bric-a-brac’.
The last expression I would like to look at from this article is in this paragraph:
Police returned the next day with a truck and a skip to clear it out and conduct a second search.
A skip is a large container people use to throw away unwanted things. Click here for some pictures.
There are just a few more shopping-related words and expressions I would like to share that weren’t in this article:
- window shopping – when you go shopping but just look at items and don’t buy anything.
- a shopping spree – when you go shopping and spend a lot of money buying more items than you usually would.
Are you a ‘shopaholic’? Are you addicted to something else?
I guess I could say I’m a ‘blogaholic’!