The Daily Bracer, July 4 2011 – Wodehouse’s words on getting wozzled

We here at The Snipe, aka Guttersnipe, were recently casting about for a new name. One idea we had was The Daily Bracer, which reminded us of something that Jeeves the Butler would serve Bertie Wooster in PG Wodehouse’s great comic Wooster/Jeeves novels and short stories.

Anyway, we decided against it as a website name but that it was right for a daily feature. The question: What to put in it?

We’re still trying to figure that out. In the meantime, here’s something we think is perfect for the inaugural Daily Bracer: a list of Wodehouse terms for, as he might put it, “lapping the stuff up by the bucket”. Thanks to Ian Michaud of The Wodehouse Society for contributing this list. It makes us want to get right wozzled.

(And if you’re a Wodehouse fan – or are thinking of becoming one – it couldn’t hurt to visit The Wodehouse Society website.)

Wodehouse by the snifter, by Ian Michaud (TWS):

Here is a list of various words and terms for people who have had much too much
to drink:

awash
blotto
boiled
fried
full to the back teeth
full to the gills
full to the tonsils
hooched
illuminated
lapping the stuff up by the bucket
lathered
lit a bit
lit up (or lit up like a candelabra)
mopping up the stuff to some extent
not as temperate as one should be
off-colour
oiled
ossified
pie-eyed
plastered
polluted
primed to the sticking point
scrooched
shifting it a bit
sozzled
squiffy
stewed (or stewed to the gills)
stinko
tanked
tight (or tight as an owl)
under the surface
whiffled
wozzled

—-
Then, of course, there are the six official types or classifications of
hangover: The Broken Compass, The Sewing Machine, The Comet, The Atomic, The
Gremlin Boogie, and The Cement Mixer.

—-
And the final verse of the Wodehouse lyric to the song “Saturday Night”
from the Broadway musical Miss Springtime may be of interest:

But she wouldn’t drink anything on Sunday,
She’d take a sip on Monday,
On Tuesday she’d indulge in beer,
On Wednesday and Thursday –
Whoops, my dear!
She seemed to lose by Friday
All sense of what was right.
She started out to hit the trail
But her efforts seemed of no avail,
So they brought her cocktails in a pail
To save time Saturday night.