The New Republic has taken the task of dissecting our collective drunkenness; or at least the words we’ve used to describe it:
There seems to be a universal trend to avoid stating the obvious. To describe someone as simply drunk, in drink, or in liquor is accurate but evidently uninspiring. One fruitful vein is to find terms that characterize drunken appearance (owleyed, pieeyed, cockeyed, lumpy, blue, lit) or behaviour, especially erratic movement (slewed, bumpsy, reeling ripe, tow row, rocky, on one’s ear, zigzag, tipped, looped) or lack of any movement at all (stiff, paralytic). Another is mental state, such as being muddled (fuddled, muzzed, queer, woozy), elated (highflown, wired, pixilated), or worn down (whittled, halfshaved, rotten, crocked, the worse for wear).
David Crystal bounces across lexical beginnings, from the oferdrunken, to the indruncen, to, worse yet, the dryncweric.
