Addictive Versus Addicting

My sister asked me last weekend when she should use “addicting” and when “addictive” was proper. My immediate response was that “addicting” wasn’t a real word, as “to addict” isn’t a transitive verb.

I looked it up, though, to see if I was right, and it turns out the topic’s up for debate, and that one out of the four dictionaries this author checked actually did list it as a transitive verb.

The main message is that “addictive” is never wrong, but some people believe “addicting” is right, too.