职业病

According to Baidu百科, "职业病是指企业、事业单位和个体经济组织等用人单位的劳动者在职业活动中，因接触粉尘、放射性物质和其他有毒、有害物质等因素而引起的疾病。"

Translated to English, it's "occupational diseases". According to Wiki, "An occupational disease is any chronic ailment that occurs as a result of work or occupational activity."

The "chronic ailment" refers to physical diseases like skin/lung diseases. But often when 职业病 appears in everyday conversations, I realise that the term actually refers to a person's action, an action related to the person's occupation.

• The person in finance insists to divide the cost right down to the last penny. We say it's the person's 职业病.

• The English teacher goes crazy when the friend forgets to put a comma and a full stop in the sentence - and has the friend edit the sentence. We say it's the teacher's 职业病.

• The XHTML programmer frowns when the colleague uses <br> instead of <br /> - and proceeds to add the / behind.

• The person working in postal goes admiring and taking pictures of mail boxes when travelling in foreign countries.

The "chronic ailment" is now more like a mental state instead of a physical state, a mental state that causes the action, which in turn triggers the use of the term 职业病.

And interestingly, when the term is used thus, from what I can recall, I've only heard it used in its Chinese form - 职业病 - and rarely, if ever, in English - occupation disease.