Description

A smart, hilarious, and lavishly illustrated guide to the most euphemised word in the English language: Drunk

A record-breaking assemblage of 2,964 different ways to say “drunk.” Tipsy, roasted, three sheets, whazooed and Boris Yeltsinned are just the beginning….With an introduction by the wise-guy lexicographer himself, Paul Dickson, and illustrations by renowned artist Brian Rea.

Dickson, who holds the Guiness World Record for collecting the most words for being, er, not sober, not only provides a dictionary of those words, but reveals why there are so many synonyms for being “drunk,” and how he came to collect more of them than anyone else.

The terms are annotated, too, and lushly illustrated, explaining the twist and turns of a language that has thousands of ways to say the same thing. How, for example, does a word like “blotto” go from the lips of P.G. Wodehouse, into the writings of Edmund Wilson, before landing with Otto from The Simpson‘s (“My name is Otto, I like to get blotto”).