Do you think that people didn't get wasted back in ye olden tymes?
You're right. But they did occasionally drink enough beer, wine and liquor to get loaded, topheavy, boryeyed, moory and podgy.
All are listed in an amazing sidebar of synonyms for "drunk" published in the St. Louis Republic on June 30, 1901. I happened upon it while trawling through "Chronicling America," a fantastic online archive of historical newspapers administered by the Library of Congress, and I haven't stopped LOLing since.
It's unclear how many of the 166 terms and words connoting drunkenness were actually in regular use back in 1901 -- some may be fanciful inventions of the newspaper's staff. (For comparison's sake, the usually-definitive Roget's International Thesaurus contains a mere 121 synonyms for "intoxicated.) But regardless of their provenance, we'd strongly support their return to the vernacular in 2013.
Here is the full list, with our favorite terms in bold and images of drunkenness from centuries past interspersed throughout.
He is intoxicated. He is inebriated. He is tipsy. He is full.He is loaded.He is jagged.He is fuddled. He is tight. He is topheavy. He is stewed. He is half shot. He is half gone. He is overcome. He is overtaken. He is primed.He is afflicted. He is elevated. He is exhilarated. He is genial. He is happy. He is mellow. He is corned. He is beery. He is winy. He is groggy. He is boozy. He is soaked.He is chock-a-block.He is lushy.He is muggy. He is boryeyed.He is cockeyed. He is muddled. He is jiggered. He is foggy. He is hazy. He is dizzy. He is dazed. He is stunned. He is moory. He is dopy. He is ossified. He is petrified. He is paralyzed. He has a (glorious or elegant) jag on. He has a load on. He has a skate on. He has a bun on. He has a brannigan on. He has a shine on. He has an edge on. He has a skin full. He has got a cup too much.He has looked on the wine when it was red.He has a bee in his bonnet. He has an applejack gait. He has been taking a little of Paddy's eye water or of red eye.He has been crooking his elbow.He has more sail than ballast.He has his main-brace well spliced. He has the sun in his eye.He can't see a hole in the ladder.He can't lie down without holding on.He is half-seas over.He is three sheets in the wind.He is on the beam end.He is under the influence of the weather.He is over the bay.He is in his cups.He is in his pots. He is off his trolley.He is off his nut.He is on a drunk.He is on a spree.He is on a bender.He is on a racket.He is on a tear.He is on the ran-tan.He is on the ree-raw.He is feeling his oats. He is full of mountain dew.He is full of dope.He is full of forty-rod booze.He is full of Jersey lightning.He is full of tangle-foot.He is full of bug-juice.He is as full as a tick.He is as full as a goat.He is as full as a bedbug.He is as drunk as a lord. He is as drunk as a boiled owl.He is as drunk as David's sow.He is week (wobbly) on his pins.He is all mops and brooms.He is about to cast up his accounts.He had a bird.He had a peach.He had a bundle.He had a beaut. He had a sosh on.He had a still on.He had been sapping up.He fell from grace.He fell off the water wart.He has been licking up.He was out of business.He had broken out again.He was down and out.He was all to the bad. He had been hitting the hard stuff.He had too much tamarack.He was up against it.He was tanked up.He had been fighting the booms.He was fixed all right.He was put under the table.He couldn't navigate.He was tacking.He was up in the air. He is disguised.He is stewed.He is bemused.He is beargeared.He is bowned.He has been dallying with the black bottle.He is podgy.He is swiped.He is obfuscated.He is dagg'd. He is weary.He has been in the sun.He has drunk more than he has bled.He is one and thirty.He made indentures with his legs.He has got the gravel rash.He drank till he gave up his half-penny.He is "nulled."He is "soshed."He is "hot as winks." He is "crapulent."He is "maggoty."He is full of pig iron and caraway seed.He is off on a bat.He is too full for utterance.He is off his base.He has got marbles in his mouth.He is full of prunes.He is loaded to the hilt.He don't know his name from a hill of beans. He has been hugging the bar.He has been blowing himself like a drunken sailor.He has been giving an imitation of a man trying to sober up.He has been feeding his face with bar glasses.His birthday drunk.He has been drinking through Shagrun's thimble.He has been to a session with the Tanks.He had too much fish bait.He went beyond the limit.He has been trying to beat John Barleycorn. He has got more than the law allows.He has been rushing the growler once too often.He has been measuring sidewalks upside down.He is holding up his head so as not to lose any.He has a champagne appetite and beer income drunk.He has a cold tea drunk.He has a pink tea drunk. And finally, this is the actual sidebar, to prove that I'm not making this up. It was printed right below a photo essay on "Beautiful Interiors of Some of the St. Louis Churches," because, "Why not?"
