Dickson - Intoxerated

2009, 2012 Paul Dickson
Illustrations 2009 Brian Rea Previously published as Drunk in 2009 Melville House Publishing
145 Plymouth Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201 www.mhpbooks.com eISBN: 978-1-61219-144-7 The Library of Congress cataloged the original hardcover edition as follows: Dickson, Paul.
Drunk : the definitve drinkers dictionary / by Paul Dickson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Drinking of alcoholic beveragesDictionaries. 2. Drinking of alcoholic beveragesQuotations, maxims, etc. 3.

Drinking of alcoholic beveragesMiscellanea. 4. Drinking of alcoholic beverages in literature. I. Title.
PN56.D8D53 2009
394.1303dc22
2009028423 v3.1

In the brief time since the first edition of this book a list of new synonyms have managed to be coined or re-discovered. Adding these to the earlier list brings the total to 2,985 synonyms for various states of intoxication, up from 2,964 in the last edition and a vast improvement from my original 1983 compilation of 2,231which allowed me to become a record-holder in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most synonyms for a single word.

I believe we can reach my ultimate goal of 3,000 in the not too distant future. Once this is attained, I will be able to turn my full attention to the Annotated Registry of Ice Cream Flavors. Paul Dickson Here are the latest additions to the Intoxerated list: BaloobasBartuned: As if ones head is lying on the bar to hear it better. Buffing the floor: As in, He was buffing the floor. Overheard at a Brooklyn, NY art opening. Doing an/the elephant: When you sit at the end of the bar and get so inebriated that you fall forward onto the bar, with one hand hanging over the edge like an elephant trunk. (Heard in Bar 68, Dumbo, Brooklyn, New York) Flapjacked: From Tom Wolfes novel I Am Charlotte Simmons. In the horrorsIntoxerated: A coinage blending intoxicated + inebriated. In the horrorsIntoxerated: A coinage blending intoxicated + inebriated.

It is the sole term created by the compiler and is used for the title of this edition of the list. Making Virginia fences: Discussing rural Virginia landscapes during the era of Thomas Jefferson, Alan Pell Crawford observed in Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson, The fences that enclosed these farmlands and kept livestock from wandering off were constructed in a zigzag arrangement so haphazard that New Englanders made a joke of it: when a man was drunk, they would say he was making Virginia fences. Mellowed as casksMoroculousPervedSchwastedSkinkoSlizzeredSmiling as the grass: Common Australian termit appears, for example, in The Adventures of Barry McKenzie by Barry Humphries. Stiffer than a new broomStiffern a goat with rigor mortis: From The Patriot Game by George V. Higgins, 1982. Well pottedWroughted

The English language includes more synonyms for drunk than for any other word. Well pottedWroughted The English language includes more synonyms for drunk than for any other word.

I suggest there are several reasons why this is so: Firstly, the condition, which is self-imposed, invites words implying folly, foolishness and self-inflicted dementia. People who are drunk look funnynot necessarily ha-ha funnybut odd-looking. There is a slurring of speech and lack of visual focus that inspires wordplay. Secondly, drinkers and those who fuel them feel more comfortable euphemizing their condition. Better to say that one was a little squiffy last night than to admit intoxication. Thirdly, there is the potential for libel that comes with calling somebody drunk.

This is especially true in the United Kingdom, where it is relatively easy to sue for libel and even the most salacious tabloid will use a softer term. Tired and emotional is the most famous such British euphemism. While in the US, journalists will describe someone as outgoing to imply a happy drunk and ruddy-faced as a pure drunk. And finally, I believe, as the late Stuart Flexner proposed in I Hear America Talking, the reason there are so many words for drunk is that people get drunk for different reasons and it affects them in different ways. So the vast English lexicon of synonyms simply reflects these many feelings and reactions. The first person to ever collect and publish a sampling from the cornucopia of English slang for drunkenness was Benjamin Franklin, who included 228 terms for intoxication in his Drinkers Dictionary in 1737.

A close student of human nature, as well as a man devoted to honesty in speech, writing and character, Franklin published his list not only to ridicule drunkenness but to expose the lengths of euphemism people would resort to, rather than to say outright that a person was drunk Others followed Franklins lead in this quirky list-making pursuit. Tom Paine published a small list in a 1794 joke book/comic almanac, Tom Paines Jests. Charles Dickens own small list appeared in his Household Words. Ambrose Bierce published a collection of 25 new words and phrases in 1882. And the lexically adventurous H. L.

Mencken added to Franklins list in his The American Language, published in 1921the early days of Prohibition. Mencken created quite a stir when he described himself as omnibibulous (meaning that he drank anything and everything alcoholic). I drink exactly as much as I want, and one drink more, he boasted. Edmund Wilson, in his 1927 The Lexicon of Prohibition, produced a list of 105 terms in ascending order of drunkenness: from mild intoxication, lit, to total incapacitation, blotto. And Langston Hughes, in his 1958 column How Many Words for Drunk, in the Chicago Defender, created a list of his own. The drunk list-making has continued down the years, with diligent lexicographers tracking and recording along the way our collective inventiveness.

I myself have dreamt about setting the drunk list record. And back in 1983 I succeeded, with the kind help of many, in setting the Guinness Book of World Records record for the most synonyms for a wordwith 2,231 words and phrases for drunkenness. It was a record that I held until 1993 when I convinced Mark Young, the American Guinness editor, that I had a new list which appeared in The Dickson Word Treasury, which came in at 2,660 entries supplanting my old Guinness record with a gain of 429 terms. But a record is a demanding thing to maintain. The language keeps growing and changing. And that change has only been accelerating under the explosive influence of technology.

List-making as a pursuit has mushroomed in the Internet era. I am especially interested in the impact of text messaging on the creation of new words, abbreviations and emoticons. So it seemed that the time was ripe for a new list that brings together the ancient and the up-to-date, Chaucers English with iPhone English. So, with the help of many fine lexicographers, researchers, doctors, bartenders, strangers and friends, I submit this, my latest list of 2,964 synonyms for soused, with just a few final caveats. 1. All the words and phrases are in as found condition, which means that mostly all of the terms with a personal pronoun refer to men (e.g.