{"id":424,"date":"2009-07-29T15:35:54","date_gmt":"2009-07-29T09:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/?p=424"},"modified":"2009-07-29T15:35:54","modified_gmt":"2009-07-29T09:35:54","slug":"we-have-drank-a-lot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/?p=424","title":{"rendered":"We have drank<\/em> a lot"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a lesson in semantics, I once quizzed my advanced students at Cuba High School, decades ago, on all the synonyms one can find for whatever right-minded people think of as objectionable.<\/p>\n

What about the word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153drunk\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? How many words did my honors students conjure up for the condition indicating one is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153three sheets to the wind\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? But by using even that expression, well, that shows how my heritage antedated Columbus.<\/p>\n

Going through some medieval notes I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d somehow kept from my teaching days at Cuba in the late-60s, I came across no fewer than 25 terms the students provided. Here are some of them: blitzed, blotto, bombed, buzzed, crocked, gay (yes, gay!), hammered, inebriated, intoxicated, loaded, looped, pickled, pie-eyed, plastered, plowed, polluted, potted, sauced, sloshed, smashed, soused, stewed, stoned, tanked, tight, tipsy, trashed and wasted. <\/span><\/p>\n

I even heard an unusual expression, thanks to my son Stan: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153stew in one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own crapulence.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Naturally, I surmised a scatological tone, until Stan explained that, having heard it on the Simpsons, he too was curious and looked it up. One\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153crapulence\u00e2\u20ac\u009d has to do with drinking, not the other thing. But back to my classroom.<\/p>\n

The lesson most of us picked up was that the human animal likes to come up with dozens of euphemisms for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153drunk.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I suppose it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easier to rationalize away our condition of being three times over the presumed level of intoxication by saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really drunk, I was tipsy.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Granted, there are subtle gradations. To me, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153buzzed\u00e2\u20ac\u009d indicates being on the way to intoxication. And a lot of the terms imply barrels of fun. Nobody minds being bothered by a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153buzzed\u00e2\u20ac\u009d person, and nobody likes hanging with someone who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plastered.<\/p>\n

Later in the Cuba class, we turned the question around: how many words can you think of for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sober\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? Now that was a lot tougher, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sober\u00e2\u20ac\u009d meaning the opposite of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153drunk.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Many people overlook the fact that sober also denotes serious, sullen, which leads us to wonder whether a loaded person who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not swinging from the chandeliers can also be sober.<\/p>\n

In Cuba, we came up with no real synonyms for sober. This week, I needed to check the online program, Thesaurus.com, to provide the following list: abstemious, abstinent, ascetic, calm, continent, controlled, dry, moderate, non-indulgent, on the wagon, restrained, sedate, self-possessed, serious, steady and temperate.<\/p>\n

Fine, but almost all of them deal with a condition that has nothing necessarily to do with booze. Non-indulgent can refer to food; calm relates also to nerves, controlled refers to mood, dry refers to weather. To ask a person if he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153on the wagon\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is like asking if he still beats his wife. True, one who drinks or has drank\/drunk a lot may be on or off the wagon, but to a non-drinker, the expression is unanswerable.<\/p>\n

We can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go a day without hearing citizens decrying the amount of damage and injury caused by drunk drivers behind the wheel. If it refers to someone else, we use the word drunk, but when it points to us, we head for the nearest euphemism.<\/p>\n

I noticed the tendency to avoid using \u00e2\u20ac\u0153drunk\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in my son Ben, who recently used the expression, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve drank a gallon of water today.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Did he mean to say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153drank\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with the past participle? When we use \u00e2\u20ac\u0153have\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in such a sentence, the term ought to be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153have drunk\u00e2\u20ac\u009d not \u00e2\u20ac\u0153have drank.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Well, Ben certainly knows the difference with this irregular verb, but, he explained, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcDrunk,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 no matter how it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s used, makes me think of someone stumbling, slurring his words, reeking of liquor and repeating, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI love you, Bro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to all and sundry.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

A website that addresses grammar questions says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Even professional writers can become intoxicated with this misuse.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It adds that speakers and writers instinctively avoid \u00e2\u20ac\u0153drunk\u00e2\u20ac\u009d because it often denotes inebriation.<\/p>\n

So, even though \u00e2\u20ac\u0153drunk\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is OK even when one talks about consuming any liquid, even something as innocuous as Ovaltine, watch for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153drank\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to gain in frequency as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153drunk\u00e2\u20ac\u009d becomes more odious.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n

Several columns back, I wrote about people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tendency to say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ice tea\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when they mean \u00e2\u20ac\u0153iced tea.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d My reasoning was simply that the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153t\u00e2\u20ac\u009d-sound drowns out the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153d\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that should be in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ice.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

On that subject, Sara Harris, who doubtless has drank\/drunk much tea, recently e-mailed the following: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I read your article in the Optic regarding iced tea. I found it interesting since yesterday I was at Walgreen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and was looking at the gallon containers of the Arizona brand \u00e2\u20ac\u02dciced tea.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 I thought at the time how often I say \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcice tea\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 when in reality it is, as you pointed out, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dciced tea.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The discrepancy between written and oral language is always intriguing!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

I felt comfortable with the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153iced tea\u00e2\u20ac\u009d explanation until someone asked me, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What about ice coffee\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? He said we seldom see \u00e2\u20ac\u0153iced coffee\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on the menu. Oh joy! Seems I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be spending the rest of my summer vacation puzzling over that question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a lesson in semantics, I once quizzed my advanced students at Cuba High School, decades ago, on all the synonyms one can find for whatever right-minded people think of as objectionable. What about the word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153drunk\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? How many words did my honors students conjure up for the condition indicating one is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153three sheets to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":428,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions\/428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}