Words for getting drunk: Academics find 546 words - but we know there is an infinite number

PG Wodehouse knew a thing or two about rejoicing in language to make people laugh and, it turns out, in one paragraph registered eight of the 546 words in the English language that can be used to describe getting drunk. The above comes from the collection of short stories Meet Mr Mulliner, and you can find plenty of examples of Jeeves being urged to splash around the whisky and go easy on the soda if you have a look. 

And we all know the central role that, for better or worse, alcohol plays in our cultural life; there’s a reason that one of the aspects of the Budget that gets focused on each year is whether the price of a pint will go up.  Now, tapping into that, a new academic study has delineated the large number - the 546 - of “drunkonyms” in English and also explored the possibility of creating new terms for being three sheets to the wind. 

As university papers go, this is up on the light-hearted and very readable end, analysing as it does the Michael McIntyre comedy routine that any word can be made to mean “drunk” with a simple suffix.

The paper quotes McIntyre: “Posh people have a variety of words for “drunk”. You can have ah… you can be “wellied”, or “trousered”, or “arseholed”. “I was rat-a**ed.”. You can actually use any word in the English language and substitute it to mean “drunk” as a posh person. It still sounds acceptable. “Did you have a drink last night?” – “You joking? I was utterly gazeboed.”

There are plenty of lovely words in the list of 546 - try out zotzed, tozy-mozy, steampigged or whiffled for starters - but the idea of listing them does somewhat defeat the point as we know that McIntyre is right - there’s an infinite number of words for this, bounded only by the imagination. It’s because going out and having a drink is a communal activity, to be enjoyed with friends, and friends consequently have their own language.

So the act of being drunk may be named after a notorious drink, a friend who can’t stop or just come from finding opposite words. Perhaps you’ve been snakebitten, Smithed, ding-donged, leather-faced, or skullfo’d, or indeed something entirely different. That’s not to make light of the harms that alcohol can do, but rather to take pleasure in experiences as and when they come, and to glory in the possibilities of language. 

Whatever the reason, the author of the study should be thanked with the most appropriate tribute - so this weekend, raise a glass before going out and getting Sanchez-Stockhammered.