How colourful is the English language. Here is just a sample of terms one might use for drunkenness:-sloshed. smashed, rat-arsed, pissed, hammered, plastered, three sheets to the wind, belted, bent, betty-booped, blitzed, bombed, inebriated, out of one's tree. shit-faced, embalmed, blotto, intoxicated, juiced up, loaded, on a bender, pickled, pie-eyed, sauced, stoned, tanked, wasted, wiped-out, wrecked, zonked.
They say that Eskimos had dozens of different terms for types of snow and that South Pacific islanders had many different terms they could apply to the various parts and multivarious uses of the coconut palm but in the modern English speaking world, we get inventive about drunkenness. And this is surely a highly over-rated state to be in. It causes fights, car accidents, family break-ups, liver damage, obesity, financial stress, sleepless nights, bravado, unwise sexual liaisons, days off work.
Don't get me wrong, I love a drink but these days always in moderation. Drink in pubs lubricates conversation, creates laughter, relieves work-related stress, releases some relationship pressures, gives lonesome people somewhere to be that isn't home. Drink isn't all bad. Do you know any other words for the state of drunkenness?
... under the weather, nicely thank you, celebrating, legless, very happy, couldn't see the road to the dunny if it had flags on it, pissing up large....
ReplyDeleteI'm just wondering where you got your thesaurus from, YP ;)
ReplyDeleteKebabbed is that drunken state you get in when you think a late night kebab is a nutritious end to an evening's binge drinking.
ReplyDeleteTo which I would add: hammered.
ReplyDeleteKATHERINE How could I forget "legless"? Hic!
ReplyDeleteJENNY I am offended. Those words all came from the thesaurus that is part of my brain.
STEVE "Kebabbed" - like it. The more one drinks the more appetising dodgy kebabs become.
SAM Were you drunk when you wrote this comment? Hammered was already on the list mate!
I'd add soused, jaked, steamin', fu', sloshed, tipsy, buzzed, merry, out of one's head, out of one's box...
ReplyDeleteLORI - I bow to your linguistic expertise. Surely this does not suggest that boozing is one of your favourite hobbies?
ReplyDeleteI use the word "toasty" for that nice, pleasant state of tingly inebriation when all is fine and one is happily partaking in fluid, witty (or so we think at the time) conversation with one's friends.
ReplyDeleteI don't know whether it cropped up or not (re: drinking metaphors/similes)because I was rather distracted at the time but that nice Stephen Fry did a programme on the use of the English language. He did the first programme on Radio 4 Monday on metaphor. (I must try and listen to it again properly.) Apparently because we were a great nautical nation (!) a lot of our language and metaphor is based on that.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/frysenglishdelight
(It's there until Monday I think!)
SAM SAID HAMMERED AGAIN (BECAUSE HE PROBABLY WAS WHEN HE WROTE THAT) HOW ABOUT...STAGGERED? BUZZED? SHIT FACED? AND YES ONE OF MY FAVORITES....SOUSED!
ReplyDelete