drunk

drunk, drunken, intoxicated, inebriated, tipsy, tight are comparable when they mean being conspicuously under the influence of intoxicating liquor.

Drunk and drunken are the plainspoken, direct, and inclusive terms

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drunk as a fiddler

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drunk as a lord

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dead drunk

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I have seen Sheridan drunk, too, with all the world; but his intoxication was that of Bacchus, and Porson's that of Silenus— Byron

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Drunk and drunken differ in that drunk is commonly used predicatively or postpositively, while drunken is chiefly attributive

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front yards littered with empty bottles, and three drunken boys sprawling on the grass— Glasgow

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Drunken frequently suggests habitual drinking to excess; it also applies to whatever pertains to or proceeds from intoxication

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Stephano, my drunken butler— Shak.

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a drunken brawl

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Intoxicated may be exactly synonymous with drunk, though it is generally felt to be a less offensive term and has thus come to be applied often to a person but slightly under the influence of liquor

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my friend requested me to add, that he was firmly persuaded you were intoxicated during a portion of the evening, and possibly unconscious of the extent of the insult you were guilty of— Dickens

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Inebriated implies such a state of intoxication that exhilaration or undue excitement results

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inebriated revelers

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All these words are used in a figurative sense as implying excess of emotion

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drunk with joy

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drunk with divine enthusiasm— Shelley

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Spinoza saw no recalcitrancy in the face of the universe and this led Novalis to characterize him as the God-intoxicated— Ginnetti

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intoxicated poetry, difficult and dense but flashing sparks of overwhelming insight— Time

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a sweet inebriated ecstasy— Crashaw

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Tipsy implies a degree of intoxication that deprives one of muscular or sometimes of mental control (drinking steadily, until just manageably tipsy, he contrived to continue so— Melville)

Tight usually implies obvious intoxication, but does not suggest loss of power over one's muscles

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he was tight, and, as was characteristic of him, he soon dropped any professional discretion that he might have been supposed to exercise— Edmund Wilson

}

Analogous words: fuddled, befuddled, confused (see CONFUSE): maudlin, soppy (see SENTIMENTAL)

Antonyms: sober