Today is March 17th, otherwise known as St. Patrick’s Day. This is a perfect opportunity to find out lots of different ways to say ‘being drunk’.
Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland and this day is earmarked as a day for celebrating Irish culture.
So, does that mean that you can find everyone in Ireland retelling age-old Gaelic folk tales, playing incredibly fast tunes on the fiddle, taking time to read some Oscar Wilde or James Joyce, or even watching a game of Hurling or Gaelic football? ‘No’, is the answer!
What actually happens, is that millions of Anglo-Saxon people (especially the Brits and Americans) around the world pretend that they have some Irish heritage and can only celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by getting unbelievably drunk on Guinness, the famous black alcoholic drink from Ireland.
In England, even people who can’t be bothered to pretend that they’re 1% Irish still go to the pub and get absolutely hammered… sometimes only drinking lager, not even Guinness… because they don’t like the taste! How Irish is that?!?!?!
Last year on St Patrick’s Day, I was travelling across central London at about 11pm on public transport. I couldn’t believe the amount of pissed people asleep in their seats and slouched on the tube… some people very much ‘worse for wear’ were even collapsed on the floor. When I got near my friend’s house where I was staying, it was the same story: totally shit-faced people crawling around in the street.
I must admit that I think that Guinness is without doubt the best drink around and when I go back to SGI for summer school every year, having a pint of ‘the black stuff ‘is one of the first things to cross off on my checklist. One or two, or possibly three pints are more than enough though for one drinking session and I don’t feel the need to get totally smashed.
My grandparents were actually Irish emigrants, so I do have a genuine claim to part-Irishness, but I still don’t feel the urge to get slaughtered on St Patrick’s Day.
There’s no other day in the year when I try to exaggerate any link to Ireland, so I can’t understand why so many people suddenly become 100% Irish for a day and feel the need to get plastered, while wearing an oversized, stupid Guinness top-hat!
IN fact, why do the British go crazy for St Patrick’s Day, but hardly anyone knows when the saint day of St George is, even though he is the patron saint of England.
So, if you need an excuse to get completely legless, then you can easily find lots of new sozzled ‘friends’ in Irish themed pubs around the world today. However, if you do go into an Irish pub, try to drink in moderation.
If you get as drunk-as-a-Lord, you might lose your normal sense of taste and decency and think that you are part-Irish: 2 hours later you might be in the back of an ambulance 🙂
Anyway, if you think that I’m being boring and a stick-in-the-mud for trying to spoil everyone’s fun, then shut-the-frick-up! I could drink any of you under the table, coz I’m Oirish, if truth be told, so it is! (You have to shout the last sentence in an Irish accent!)
SLANG WORDS THAT MEAN ‘drunk’
- Hammered
- Pissed (Be careful: In American English, this means ‘to be really angry’, NOT drunk)
- Shit-faced
- Smashed
- Slaughtered
- Plastered
- Legless
- Sozzled
- As-drunk-as-a-Lord
- Drink sb under the table
