A person who drinks alcohol to excess habitually

Usage examples of dipsomaniac.

Penny had watched a dozen older women become flaming alcoholics, and she had heard rumors of several celebrated cases in which the wives of top generals and admirals were habitually attended by junior officers whose job it was to see that the dipsomaniac did not create a scandal or fall headfirst down a flight of stairs.

You suggest a dipsomaniac fought for the whisky bottle, and then having won, rolled it away in a corner, spilling one half and leaving the other.

In literature, we are shown a line-up of murderers, dipsomaniacs, drug addicts, neurotics and psychotics as representatives of man’s soul—and are invited to identify our own among them—with the belligerent assertions that life is a sewer, a foxhole or a rat race, with the whining injunctions that we must love everything, except virtue, and forgive everything, except greatness.

Mrs Hockley, for instance—ah, and this is in strict confidence, naturally, inspector—Mrs Hockley, from Cadwell Avenue, whose husband was an alderman and a dipsomaniac, I can now only describe as a transfigured woman.