Can any English word be turned into a synonym for “drunk”? Not all, but many can.

British comic Michael McIntyre has a customary bit in his standup routines in regards to the many (many!) slang phrases posh British individuals use to explain being drunk. These embody “wellied,” “trousered,” and “ratarsed,” to call a few. McIntyre’s bit rests on his assertion that just about any English word can be modified into a so-called “drunkonym,” bolstered by a few useful examples: “I used to be totally gazeboed,” or “I’m going to get completely and totally carparked.”

It’s a intelligent riff that sparked the curiosity of two German linguists. Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer of Chemnitz University of Technology and Peter Uhrig of FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg determined to attract on their experience to check McIntyre’s declare that any word within the English language may be modified to imply “being in a state of excessive inebriation.” Given their prevalence, “It is very stunning that drunkonyms are nonetheless under-researched from a linguistic perspective,” the authors wrote of their new paper revealed within the Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association. Bonus: the authors included an intensive appendix of 546 English synonyms for “drunk,” drawn from numerous sources, which makes for entertaining studying.

There is a lengthy custom of arising with colourful expressions for drunkenness within the English language, with the Oxford English Dictionary itemizing a utilization as early as 1382: “merry,” which means “boisterous or cheerful attributable to alcohol; slight drunk, tipsy.” Another OED entry from 1630 lists “blinde” (as in blind drunk) as a drunkonym. Even Benjamin Franklin acquired into the act together with his 1737 Drinker’s Dictionary, itemizing 288 phrases and phrases for denoting drunkenness. By 1975, there have been greater than 353 synonyms for “drunk” listed in that 12 months’s version of the Dictionary of American Slang. By 1981, linguist Harry Levine famous 900 phrases used as drunkonyms.

So the sheer variety of drunkonyms has been growing, with BBC tradition reporter Susie Dent estimating in 2017 that there are some 3,000 English slang synonyms for being drunk, together with “ramsquaddled,” “obfusticated,” “tight as a tick,” and my private favourite, “been too free with Sir Richard.” Sanchez-Stockhammer and Uhrig supply a few caveats, noting that the latter quantity is probably going inflated (very similar to the variety of phrases for “snow” in Eskimo languages). Also, most drunkonyms should not regularly used and have a tendency to fall out of use shortly slightly than taking root within the broader cultural consciousness.

For their research, Sanchez-Stockhammer and Uhrig scoured numerous sources to compile their very own working checklist of drunkonyms, excluding any with “drunk” as a base (e.g., “martin-drunk”) and utilizing Excel to delete any repeated phrases. They ended up with the 546 drunkonyms listed of their appendix.

Surprisingly, there have been Urban Dictionary entries for McIntyre’s phrases “gazeboed” (2008), and “carparked,” and “pyjama-ed” (2009). McIntyre first recorded this explicit bit in October 2009 for a DVD, suggesting that “these phrases have been already in use both shortly earlier than or across the time of McIntyre’s tour”—maybe impressed by the comic’s earlier standup performances as he labored out the fabric earlier than producing a DVD for posterity. That stated, the October 2009 viewers responded with a lot of laughter and applause, so the drunkonyms have been not less than unfamiliar to many in attendance that evening.

“If McInyre’s speculation have been proper that any English word can be used to imply ‘drunk,’ it will be vital to make sure the listeners’ understanding of the revolutionary use of the word both via contextual clues or different linguistic means,” the authors wrote. They discovered that the fundamental construction of McIntyre’s drunkonyms is widespread sufficient—specifically, combining “be” or “get” with an intensifying adverb (“completely”) and a random word ending in “-ed.” However, that alone would not sufficiently clarify the convenience with which individuals grasp the which means of the brand new usages.

Sanchez-Stockhammer and Uhrig recommend there’s an extra cultural factor at play. By the time English native audio system attain maturity, they’ve merely been uncovered to so many drunkonyms that they’ll simply guess the brand new which means primarily based on context—and like any good skilled comic, McIntyre makes positive to prime his viewers.

“We can say that the wide selection of phrases noticed within the already current lists of drunkonyms appears to help the view that there’s a giant variety of phrases that one may probably use to creatively categorical drunkenness in English,” the authors concluded. That stated, “There is ample potential for future research into the query… as our productive constructions solely apply to lower than half of all drunkonyms” collected of their appendix.

We sit up for future insights into the structural types of “blotto,” “slug-nutty,” or “stocious.”

Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association, 2024. DOI: 10.1515/gcla-2023-0007  (About DOIs).