My excellent wife referred me to Ben Franklin’s 229 Words for Drunkenness, thinking that it would bring me cheer and perhaps LH material, and she was right on both counts. Jack Shepherd writes:
Anyone who’s had a toad and a half for breakfast, taken Hippocrates’ grand elixir, or been too free with Sir Richard knows that a thump over the head with Samson’s jawbone is sometimes more trouble than it’s worth. If none of that made much sense to you, take it up with Benjamin Franklin, who — when he wasn’t busy drafting the Declaration of Independence or flying his kite in a lightning storm — appears to have spent a surprising amount of time collecting amusing expressions about the dangers of drinking to excess.
Despite his contention that “Drunkenness is a very unfortunate Vice,” Franklin was by no means a teetotaler. […] But as much as Franklin enjoyed a decent French wine, he was also committed to the virtue of moderation, and it was in this spirit that he published his “Drinkers Dictionary” (“gather’d wholly from the modern Tavern-Conversation of Tiplers”) in The Pennsylvania Gazette in 1737.
It goes from the A’s (He is Addled, He’s casting up his Accounts, He’s Afflicted, He’s in his Airs) to the W’s (The Malt is above the Water, He’s Wise, He’s Wet, He’s been to the Salt Water, He’s Water-soaken, He’s very Weary, Out of the Way), and one can only wonder why there are no later letters (zounds, say I!). It’s a lot of fun, and I recommend perusing the whole thing. (Ben’s list was mentioned in passing in this 2024 post, but it deserves its own.) Skål!
Apart from those that have survived throughout the Anglophone world like ‘tipsy’, here are some comments on ones that have survived in Ireland:
Block and Block–why not blocked?
Cock’d-now cockeyed
Oil’d — OK, but for some reason this became well oiled
Hammerish–why not hammered?
Muddy–since you already have muddled, is this a mishearing of (misprint for) muzzy or mouldy?
Merry –ok
His skin is full–I think this is more “he’s got a skinful’
Too free with the creature–this is more taken/had a drop of the creature
Yes, a couple of them reminded me of Ireland and its drinking lexicon as well.
As a child I could not understand why something so socially appropriate needs euphemisms like навеселе.
(As an adult I don’t understand it either: when I don’t want to say я пьян[ый] I will go for a dysphemism: нажрался)
Drinking was socially appropriate; being too drunk, not so.
Most of the expressions are your basic opaque slang, but some seem to make somewhat meaningful references: “Been at / Going to Geneva / Jerusalem / Jericho”, “Been among the Philistines / Philippians”, “Been with Sir John Goa / Contending with Pharaoh / Seen the French King” — what are those all about?
Also “drunkenness” is a weird English word. I can form a Russian word with this meaning, *пьяность, but (a) it sounds like *pregnantness would (b) you don’t need it, because “pregnancy” describes the state, but Russian пьянство refers to drinking, not a “state” and we don’t have a noun for this state. I first heard it in Sunny Afternoon by The Kinks and was perplexed. [The hero’s wife] “telling tales of drunkenness and cruelty”. In my head it sounded like “telling tales of drunken state” – too abstract.
@Y, I have some abstract understanding that IF there are all those euphemisms, THEN some people need them, and it is not “socially appropriate”. Logically. It is seems I don’t know this social context and don’t understand it intuitively. Don’t feel it:( As if I’m talking about a culture which I don’t “know” but have “heard about” once… except that Russian too has such euphemisms so that culture must be Russian:/
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Your examples reminded me “falling into the arms of Morpheus*”, “the land of nod” etc.
Speaking of socially appropriate things that nevertheless attract euphemisms and circumlocutions for some reason.
*I heard from someone in Russian even в объятия мощного мужика Морфея. “mighty mouzhik” Perhaps he was quoting something, I don’t know what.
Навеселе and many of LH’s examples make you think of something like “a lady can’t be ‘drunk’, she can be навеселе” (cf. весёлый “merry”).
Morpheus and Y’s examples are different: those are meant to be funny rather than euphemistic, to draw attention rather than distract it.
Well, those are all funny. I can’t think of any non-funny euphemisms other than medicalese and legalese “intoxicated”, “under the influence”, etc.
What I’d meant was that drinking in moderation, and therefore in principle, was socially appropriate (in Ben Franklin’s circle, anyway). None of those euphemisms are meant for one who had had a mellowing glass of wine after dinner.
I see what you mean about the difference between “drunkenness” and “pregnancy”. I think the difference is that the former, like “hunger”, is short-term. “Pregnancy” is of course temporary, but lasts a while, so perhaps more comparable to “blindness”.
@Y, I rather meant that (hypothetical) form *pregnantness (deadj., productive suffix) will sound as odd as the (hypothetical) form *пьяность (deadj., productive suffix).
But there is a reason why English does not have *pregnantness.
Semantically беременность “pregnancy” and drunkenness refer to states.
I can’t think of a conceivable reason why English has “drunkenness” (a normal word) and Russian does have a word with a similar meaning (and I don’t feel this need and find the meaning too abstract for a wife to complain at). I think I heard (and liked) the song when I was 22 and I remember well how I spent quite a while thinking of this word.
However we have пьянство (when people drink too much), разврат (when people fuck too much), блядство (when women fuck too much). Unlike their English translations in dictionaries they do not describe states any more than, say, “gluttony”.
(Among them пьянство – lit. something like drunkery – that can be translated as “[heavy] drinking”
его беспробудное пьянство – “his wakeless drinking” not “his wakeless drunkenness”)
Re -ness nouns
I feel that your dictionary is not accurate.
Readiness, crankiness and righteousness are not static, they suggest (for me at least) activity from which the observer (or victim) of the associated actions can infer a mental state of the actor. I think drunkenness and possibly Russianness (I am not suggesting there is a connection between the two) also fall within this category 🙂.
Re the place terms, I think there is a base sense “transported” with a specific sense of the kind of intoxication experienced.
Geneva-gin
Jerusalem-swaying?
Jericho-tumbled down (or wordplay on jeroboam)?
Philistines/Philippians-smashed (or wordplay on fill)?
Sir John Goa-pissed?
Pharoah–strong malt beer
French king–prostrate?
EDIT: I would like to add in support the Irish term baloobas, presumably = smashed and based on a sad 20C incident
Can’t speak to Geneva, but Jerusalem and Jericho are both famous for having been smashed/tumbled down.
And “Philistines” might be a Samson-in-the-temple reference (or maybe a Samson-with-a-jawbone reference). Smashing down the Philistines was involved in both scenarios.
It occurs to me that these phrases might have been attempts by those not yet incapacitated to refer to those who were incapacitated, to demonstrate that they were still sober enough to make biblical allusions.
Gin was originally and folk-etymologically called “geneva”, according to etymonline.
For “Philistines”, the OED says,
“Tired and emotional.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tired_and_emotional
While this might reference animal hallucinations brought on by delirium tremens, a more poetical interpretation is that it references the constellations of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor; either hallucinations of stars, or the referent is notionally supine, looking at the northern sky.
A possible biblical allusion is of course the bears of Elisha.
Speaking of stars:
Were there Quenya-speaking elves in the Americas?
Elen síla lúmenn’ omentielvo!
Reminds me of angeheitert. (Heiter: “merry”, also “sunny or mostly sunny” of weather.)
Similarly, German does have Trunkenheit, but only as a legal term followed by am Steuer “at the wheel” – legalese enough that it does not use the normal term Lenkrad for a car’s steering wheel.
In my experience, there is absolutely nothing “legal” about Trunkenheit, and Steuer is the everyday word, Lenkrad being much rarer.
Once again we discover that German is a land of contrasts.
Also, the advantage of Steuer is that it can be used for laws related to the conduct and misdeeds of the drunken pilot of a motorboat or sailboat, or (I suspect) bicycle.
In my experience, there is absolutely nothing “legal” about Trunkenheit, and Steuer is the everyday word, Lenkrad being much rarer.
And in my experience, Trunkenheit is a term I wouldn’t expect to be used outside of official or high-literary contexts. As for Steuer vs. Lenkrad, for me the latter is the normal word for the steering wheel as part of a car, while I use Steuer almost only in the colocations am / hinter dem Steuer when talking about cars.