Many historical and colloquial terms have been used to refer to someone who is drunk or a heavy drinker. Some of the most common old names include sot, drunkard, and inebriate.
Our favourites in the Independent office include 'symbelwlonc' – one of the earliest recorded words for 'drunk' in Old English – as well as 'splifficated' (1906), 'whiffled' (1927), 'pot-shotten' (1629), 'fox-drunk' (1592) and 'in one's cups' (1611).
Having a drink was thought to cure illness, provide strength, and warm the body. A drink could take many forms: a blackstrap, a syllabub, a toddy, a flip, a rattle-skull, a stonewall, a whistle-whetter, a snort, and—for shots of rum had first thing in the morning—an antifogmatic.
When discussing alcohol, some Prohibition slang terms are going to sound pretty familiar since many still exist in the American lexicon, such as bent, canned, fried, plastered or blotto to describe an intoxicated person. Spifflicated, zozzled and boiled as an owl are terms that mean the same but are no longer common.
Word of the day: ARFARFAN'ARF (Victorian slang) - a drunkard. Someone who has had many half pints.
The best of 70s slang
From Middle English drinken, from Old English drincan (“to drink, swallow up, engulf”), from Proto-West Germanic *drinkan, from Proto-Germanic *drinkaną (“to drink”), of uncertain origin; possibly from Proto-Indo-European *dʰrenǵ- (“to draw into one's mouth, sip, gulp”), nasalised variant of *dʰreǵ- (“to draw, glide”).
pissed (British, Australian, New Zealand, slang) He was just lying there completely pissed. blatted (British, slang) boozed-up (slang)
Drunk as Cooter Brown
The origin of this chiefly Southern term is debated. Cooter Brown might be “some proverbial drunkard,” according to a quote in DARE. The Farmer's Almanac describes him as someone who lived on the Mason-Dixon line during the Civil War.
The verb and adjective uses of inebriate both date to the 15th century, with the noun showing up late (and tipsy) in the 18th. The Latin word it may be traced to is ebrius, meaning… you guessed it, “drunk.” Sober, on the other hand, comes from the Latin sobrius.
From Middle English drinkere, drynkere, from Old English drincere (“drinker”), from Proto-Germanic *drinkārijaz (“drinker”), equivalent to drink + -er.
"Tumble down the sink" (drink)
From the 1840s, a condition known as dipsomania is defined as persistent drunkenness, or "a morbid and insatiable craving for alcohol, often of a paroxysmal character." In 1852, a Swedish physician named Magnus Huss coined the term alcoholism to denote both the action of alcohol on the human system, and the diseased ...
Hammered – This slang term for intoxicated can be traced back to the Mad Men era, the early 1950's.
slang, intoxicated; drunk.
drunkard in American English
SYNONYMS toper, sot, tippler, drinker. drunkard and inebriate are terms for a person who drinks hard liquors habitually. drunkard connotes willful indulgence to excess. inebriate is a slightly more formal term than drunkard.
Cajun French word for drunk is casséd.
Way back when English was Old English, between AD 600 and 1100, you were either “drunken” or “fordrunken” (very drunk) after a night of carousing. Even today, “drunken” will do for describing how you may be spending New Year's Eve. But you might also be “blinkered,” “oiled” or “lit.”
budgy = drunk. “When pestered by some 'Budgy guy' / You'd almost read it in their eye.” William De Vere, Jim Marshall's New Pianner. bug juice = illicitly distilled whiskey.
Sozzled, Trollied, Wankered.
Marra means 'mate' or 'friend'. This rather sinister sounding Geordie word means 'drunk'. Expect to hear it a lot on nights out round the Toon.
Swizzling too much would make you 'blootered,' or thoroughly intoxicated. Other adjectives for drunk were: buffy, dead-oh, half-shot, lushy, scammered (like hammered), shicker, sozzled, squiffed, squiffy, squizzed, and tanked. If you looked awful on top of getting drunk, you might be described as 'shickery. '
The word “Alcohol” comes from Arabic “al-kuhl” which means “BODY EATING SPIRIT” and gives root origins to the English term of “Ghoul”.
Synonyms
In the Viking Age two drinks dominated ale and mead. Both were important but used in very different contexts. Ale belonged to everyday life mead was reserved for celebration and honor. Ale was brewed from grain water and herbs and was much weaker than modern beer.