The Rice University Neologisms Database

disorder in which a person obsessively tans After seeing an article in Self Magazine about the hazards of tanning which used the term tanorexia in the summer of 2004, my friends and I began to use it in conversation such as, “She is definitely tanorexic because all she did was lie out this summer.” Here is used as an adjective, but tanorexia is a noun that came about from the blending of the base tan and the suffix -orexis. It is obviously not a scientific or medical disease but is used as an overstatement. Thus, people use tanorexia in a sarcastic fashion because it comes from clipping "an" off the serious medical condition anorexia and attaching its suffix –orexic to tan.