A definitive drinker's dictionary with illustrations by Brian Rea...
In the introduction, Dickson claims there are more adjectives for "drunk" than for any other word. Perhaps this is so; but, it is an interesting conceit with which to start a book about the state of drunkenness and its attendant effect on vocabulary. He buttresses his case with a reference to his Guiness Book of World Records record of the most synonyms for a word (2,231 words and phrases for drunkenness). It's been over 26 years, so naturally the list has grown.
Some of My Personal Favorites:
A piece of bread and cheese in the head
Accidentally Horizontal
Materially Altered (courtesy of Punch magazine... awesome!)
Eyes like piss holes in the snow
Dithered
Tacoed
...and, what might be an all-time great, owing more to the state of drunkenness it describes than the greatness of the word itself:
Swipy ("Swipy" is listed in The Slang Dictionary or The Vulgar Words, Street Phrases and "Fast" Expressions of High and Low Society (London, 1884) as a term for a more intense state of beastliness that comes beyond mild intoxication and before total fuddlement.
Wonderful!
A great Holiday gift, to be sure.
(Click here to purchase Drunk)
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