A person with dipsomania; a chronic alcoholic with an uncontrollable craving for alcohol.
Short for 'dipsomaniac,' shortened through common usage in early 20th-century slang. Ultimately derived from Greek 'dipsa' (thirst) plus the medical suffix '-mania' (obsessive craving).
'Dipso' became the cool abbreviation of a medical term—the way modern slang works, scientists created 'dipsomania' to sound clinical, but people just shortened it to 'dipso,' and that's what stuck in everyday speech.
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