Every British Word for Drunk in Order of Drunkeness - Part 1

From Tipsy to Twatted

It is said that Inuits have over a thousand words for snow. Who could deny that is pretty poetic and enchanting?

Just as romantic is the volume of words we Brits have for that funny feeling that comes over and overcomes us after draining away some booze. With 3,000 + to pick from, there’s more than enough vocab to pinpoint exactly where on the axis of glory and regret your evening fell, and stayed fallen.

There was a time when you had to go through the weekly hardship of making that call yourself. Was I shit-faced? Or was I only rat-arsed? Is that piss? Why am I covered in arse-stained stained-glass? 

Through painstaking first-hand research into the human shame threshold and beyond, my team has stumbled into a breakthrough: the drunk-spectrum. My researchers have attributed a precise-ish degree of booziness² to each commonly used definition of “drunk”. 

Whatever your literal poison and whenever it overthrows your logic, we've got a word that fits the tumbling outcome.

Tipsy 

Ahhh tipsy. The edge has been rounded off life and you feel like a slightly enhanced version of yourself. In your current bubbly state, you would glide charmingly through a job interview and into a fortnightly pickleball arrangement with your new boss. This is you on your best day. 

Half Cut

At this, the only known fraction of cut, there’s a power struggle between the mounting effects of the booze and your better judgment. The half cut are warming to the reasoning behind dancing, but don't think it's really for them.

At this stage, you can suppress the urge to launch into a conversation with a stranger. However, you are chitchatting away with the bar staff, who seemed so distant a drink ago. Fixing their attention with intense eye contact and asking them “How’s it going?” Then listening to an entire two-thirds of their response before cutting them off with your order. 

Pissed as a fart

So, exactly how pissed is a fart? Despite tactful attempts to muffle it, a fart insists on causing a scene. A fart brings a moment of much-needed release to the owner, and bearable discomfort to anyone in the blast radius. A fart is about as pissed as an irritating auntie a few Boxing Day sherrys down. 

When pissed as a fart a cautionary sicky-burp rushes up your throat, but thinks better of making an appearance. 

Pissed

“I’m pissed.” You will know you’re pissed because the moment it dawns on you, you’ll update anyone close by. The pissed make friends with the ease and frequency of toddlers. You’re mainly well-received when gatecrashing other people’s conversations and you can smoothly crowbar in well-trodden anecdotes. Drunk enough to dance, not too drunk to bone. 

The state of pissed is a 42-minute long advertisement for the benefits of alcohol. That glorious window of drunkenness that is easy to achieve, but near impossible to maintain. Words flow smugly out like a breakfast show host with a miraculously beneficial hangover. Liquid charm and confidence without appearing too visibly boozy. The sweet spot.

Ratarsed

In real and present danger of exiting the zone, you have been drinking. Your blood alcohol content has a dash more bounce per ounce. When ratarsed you bump up the tempo of your wiggling and cover more ground. Somehow you find the confidence to work in experimental dance moves and stray from your friends on assured flirting expeditions. 

But, what’s this now? Something rousing in your belly. Hmmm. There it goes again, another shifting digestive omen. Probably, nothing. Certainly not related to pouring a milky cocktail and a pint of ale into the same fleshy pouch and then rattling it at 120 bpm. A good time to wash down whichever cocktail is the closest shade to a Rennie, and get on with it. 

Bladdered

The quarter-hourly orbit of the toilet has become such a chore that the admin involved feels plain unfair. As a result, there’s more than an acceptable dribble in your undies. There seemed no obvious incentive to shake. The time saved was spent laughing at the hilarity of your situation. Me, in a toilet? Ha! Where do I come up with this stuff?

If there’s someone standing judgmentally by the sink then treat your hands to a quick splash of water. Just enough to revitalise any napping bacteria.

Battered

When battered, you feel words curling and slurring slightly as they exit your mouth. The face that they are aimed at shows all signs that they are looking for an out from this interaction. Focus. Make a concerted effort to spell out ev-er-y syl-la-ble. The night's first fleck of spray lands.

Sloppy

The urge for a half-time snack was too strong. Now, there’s cheddar under your fingernails and a gleam in your eye. You could knock out a decent watercolour from the palette of sauces on your groin. Maybe a landscape of the sun setting on your hopes of achieving anything tomorrow. At least, the gritty meat has taken the sting out of your fermenting breath. 

Hammered

An evening in the making, here comes a long-overdue reintroduction to your stomach contents. Luckily for your shoes, it’s that predictable, manageable sick. The familiar rumbles of belly thunder alert you that the lumpy lightning will not be long now.

This calls for a smug, matter-of-fact trip to the loo. The sick is evacuated in an orderly fashion, without any chance of rebound spray. Amicably parting ways with your stomach lining and Co, leaves you refreshed. Barely have you said your goodbyes to your sick, before you’re back at the bar working on the sequel. 

Plastered 

Each lap of the bar is shaving a minute of your evening's best. You’ll drink to that. The pronoun - that, and any other of the words for that matter. You've entered into a drinking competition with yourself and you are winning and losing, but by no means level. You are bending the rules for your own gain. You are a corrupt official adjudicating your own downfall. That! That! That!

Bollucksed 

Once you prided yourself on your drink-to-mouth coordination. Now your chest bears the dribble stains of a few miscalculated attempts. You are declining rapidly in all areas, bar drink acceptance. Drunk enough to admit you love your friends. Only you’ve lost them, and decided to replace them with loyal, dependable drinks. 

Here comes a grossly inflated idea of your own attractiveness, and you've drunk your skin thick enough to take rejection head-on.

Twatted

You’ve got your heart set on some kind of two-bit disturbance. In your own eyes, you are a mischievous and misunderstood prankster. The bar staff are just unschooled to the premise behind your comic stylings. The bouncers especially don’t get your physical humour. It’s all in the slapstick timing of the shattering bottle, the juxtaposition of the owner of the drink and you, the person drinking it. Philistines. 

A hard person to find and harder to contain. Reports are coming in from all over the place of your rummy mischief. What was previously thought of as a few isolated twatty shenanigans has just been upgraded to a spree.