By the villages: If you come home by the villages you are drunk, whereas if you come home by the fields you have no opportunity to drink.
-Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
Benjamin Franklin printed two hundred euphemisms for being drunk in 1736 in the Pennsylvania Gazette. Here are a few of them:
- pidgeon-ey'd
- moon-ey'd
- drunk as a wheelbarrow
- half-way to Concord
- crump-footed
- double-tongu'd
- dizzy as a goose
- jambled
- going to Jerusalem
- contending with Pharoah
- had been to free with Sir John Strawberry
Pretty funny that none of these are still around today!
i heart etymology.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if he included three sheets to the wind, that's still around.
My fav euphemism is hard to translate into text...it might lose something. But when you're really drunk, sometimes you might drive the Buick to Europe.
Clench your throat and say it thusly:
drive the BUick to EURope
Get it?
Stop by soon! I have a new award for you :) Thanks for being awesome!
ReplyDelete