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The ordinary-sized words are for everyone, but the big ones are especially for children.



Tuesday 18 May 2021

Thing Not To Be Today: shickered.

 There are a lot of words that mean the same thing as shickered - intoxicated, drunk, inebriated, tipsy, tight, merry, pie-eyed, plastered, sloshed, pickled...and those are only a few of the polite and old-fashioned ones.

If you're shickered then you probably have some connection with Australia or New Zealand (if you use that word, I mean - there are, obviously, drunks to be found more or less everywhere).

If you're pie-eyed, on the other hand, you're probably a character in a fair amount of trouble in a story by PG Wodehouse; and if you're intoxicated then you might well be in a police station.

So, while The Word Den cannot recommend any of these states, there are worse things to be, I suppose, than shickered.

The word comes from somewhere unexpected, too.

Thing Not To Be Today: shickered. This word seems to mean affected by drink, but not necessarily completely plastered. It comes from the Yiddish שיכּור‎, shiker, which means drunk, from the Hebrew שיכּור‎.

The Drunkness of Noah by Jacopo Chimenti




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