For my 12th Top 10 list I’m feeling word nerdy, so it’s time to break out the Drunk Words, a project I worked on several years ago and finally got back on line last year. One of things I absolutely love about the English language is just how many words we have for the same thing, especially colloquialisms, better known as slang. If you accept the anthropologist theory that what’s important to a culture can be deduced by the number of words it has for certain aspects of its culture (which I don’t, BTW) then the nearly 2,000 words for being drunk would say quite a bit. Only sex and parts of the body seem to have more. Anyway, my choices are based simply on the way the words sound or some other ephemeral quality that I like, like cleverness or the pure unabashed silliness of the phrase. For this list, I stuck to phrases rather than single words, which I’ll reserve for a later top ten list. There are so many great drunken phrases to choose from, take a look at the list and let me know your faves. Anyway, here’s List #12:
Top 10 Drunk Phrases
| Called Earl on the Big White Phone (sometimes it’s Ralph that’s called) | |
| Breath Strong Enough to Carry Coal With | |
| Sir Richard Has Taken Off His Considering Cap | |
| Amicably Incandescent | |
| Laughing at the Carpet | |
| Nicely Irrigated with Horizontal Lubricant | |
| Put to Bed with a Shovel | |
| Got His Snowsuit On and Heading North | |
| Cork High and Bottle Deep | |
| Diluted the Blood in His Alcohol System |
It was really difficult to keep the list to ten, and a great many colorful phrases were left on the cutting room floor. Here’s a few more that almost made the list:
Blue Around the Gills, Brahms & Liszt [Cockney], Full Up to the Brain, Got Up to the Third Story, Has Taken Hippocrates’ Grand Elixr, In Tipium Grove, Letting the Finger Ride the Thumb, The Malt is Above the Water, Moist Around the Edges, Shellacked the Goldfish Bowl, Sniffed the Barmaid’s Apron, Swallowed a Hare, and Under the Affluence of Incohol.
Let me know your favorites, and if you see any you know of that are missing from the list, please post a comment and I’ll add it.
Also, if you have any ideas for future Top 10 lists you’d like to see, drop me a line.