Skunks, Sheets, and Sheds

Sometimes a new word starts me thinking "Why do we have more than one word for this?" I understand that different degrees of the same condition might warrant further description, but what's the difference between drunk and intoxicated and inebriated and why three different words?

First, the definitions: drunk usually refers to a condition caused by extreme intake of alcoholic beverage, and can mean someone who is habitually in that state. Intoxicated is a state caused by alcohol or drugs that is described as a loss of control affecting the nervous system. Inebriated is a synonym for drunk (and when is someone ever ebriated? - see Dec. 26, 2009 post).

So why do we have the two words drunk and inebriated? Etymology, my dear Watson. ("Elementary, my dear Watson" was a phrase never published by Arthur Conan Doyle - it was used first in the movie version of Sherlock Holmes.)

Drunk comes from the Middle English word dronke, and inebriate comes from Latin. Ebrius means drunk, and the in- prefix is an intensive in Latin, so inebrius means very drunk. Ebriare is the past participle of ebrius, and inebriare is as close as Latin comes to providing us with the word we use today.

Inebriated has become a polite synonym for drunk, and has some connotation of not being as intoxicated as someone who's drunk.

Intoxicate has a more sinister etymology. It comes from the Latin word toxicum which means to poison. When you smear poison on something the word becomes toxicare, and the prefix in- gives indication of the state of having been poisoned. We also get the word toxic from this root. While the word we use today comes from a very negative root word, it doesn't retain only negative usages. I am intoxicated by my wife's beauty, and that's not a bad thing.

There's one other word today: dipsomania. You would think dipsomania would be the fear of drinking or being drunk, but that's not so. Dipsomania actually is a medical term first popularized in the 1800s for the extreme or abnormal craving for alcohol. It comes from the German word dipsa, which means thirst.

Drunkenness has spawned some of the most colorful euphemisms (second only to sex, I think). My dictionary starts the list with tipsy, tight, blind and blotto, but there are others like plastered, potted, and stewed. If you have a poetic bent you can be drunk as a skunk, or if you like sailing you can be three sheets to the wind (sheets refers to the ropes that held the sails in place; having a sheet to the wind causes loss of control and power).

BBC News online (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1883481.stm) has a list of 141 euphemisms for drunk. The list includes entries from ankled to zombied, including the colorful "shedded (as in 'My shed has collapsed taking most of the fence with it.')"

So, if you're enjoying the Super Bowl today, avoid getting shedded.