drunk
[druhngk]
| 1. | being in a temporary state in which one's physical and mental faculties are impaired by an excess of alcoholic drink; intoxicated: The wine made him drunk. |
| 2. | overcome or dominated by a strong feeling or emotion: drunk with power; drunk with joy. |
| 3. | pertaining to or caused by intoxication or intoxicated persons. |
| 4. | an intoxicated person. |
| 5. | a spree; drinking party. |
| 6. | pp. and nonstandard pt. of drink. |
1. drunken, inebriated.
1-3. sober.
Both drunk and drunken are used as modifiers before nouns naming persons: a drunk customer; a drunken merrymaker. Only drunk occurs after a linking verb: He was not drunk, just jovial. The actor was drunk with success. The modifier drunk in legal language describes a person whose blood contains more than the legally allowed percentage of alcohol: Drunk drivers go to jail. Drunken, not drunk, is almost always the form used with nouns that do not name persons: drunken arrogance; a drunken free-for-all. In such uses it normally has the sense “pertaining to, caused by, or marked by intoxication.” Drunken is also idiomatic in such expressions as drunken bum. See also drink.
drink
[dringk]
verb, drank or (Nonstandard
) drunk, drunk or, often, drank, drink⋅ing; noun | 1. | to take water or other liquid into the mouth and swallow it; imbibe. |
| 2. | to imbibe alcoholic drinks, esp. habitually or to excess; tipple: He never drinks. They won't find jobs until they stop drinking. |
| 3. | to show one's respect, affection, or hopes with regard to a person, thing, or event by ceremoniously taking a swallow of wine or some other drink (often fol. by to): They drank to his victory. |
| 4. | to be savored or enjoyed by drinking: a wine that will drink deliciously for many years. |
| 5. | to take (a liquid) into the mouth and swallow. |
| 6. | to take in (a liquid) in any manner; absorb. |
| 7. | to take in through the senses, esp. with eagerness and pleasure (often fol. by in): He drank in the beauty of the scene. |
| 8. | to swallow the contents of (a cup, glass, etc.). |
| 9. | to propose or participate in a toast to (a person, thing, or event): to drink one's health. |
| 10. | any liquid that is swallowed to quench thirst, for nourishment, etc.; beverage. |
| 11. | liquor; alcohol. |
| 12. | excessive indulgence in alcohol: Drink was his downfall. |
| 13. | a swallow or draft of liquid; potion: She took a drink of water before she spoke. |
| 14. | Informal. a large body of water, as a lake, ocean, river, etc. (usually prec. by the): His teammates threw him in the drink. |
bef. 900; ME drinken, OE drincan; c. D drinken, G trinken, Goth drinkan, ON drekka

2. tope. 5. quaff. Drink, imbibe, sip refer to swallowing liquids. Drink is the general word: to drink coffee. Imbibe is formal in reference to actual drinking; it is used more often in the sense to absorb: to imbibe culture. Sip implies drinking little by little: to sip a cup of broth. 9. toast.
As with many verbs of the pattern sing, sang, sung and ring, rang, rung, there is some confusion about the forms for the past tense and past participle of drink. The historical reason for this confusion is that originally verbs of this class in Old English had a past-tense singular form in a but a past-tense plural form in u. Generally the form in a has leveled out to become the standard past-tense form: We drank our coffee. However, the past-tense form in u, though considered nonstandard, occurs often in speech: We drunk our coffee.
The standard and most frequent form of the past participle of drink in both speech and writing is drunk: Who has drunk all the milk? However, perhaps because of the association of drunk with intoxication, drank is widely used as a past participle in speech by educated persons and must be considered an alternate standard form: The tourists had drank their fill of the scenery. See also drunk.
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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drink (drĭngk) v. drank (drāngk), drunk (drŭngk), drink·ing, drinks v. tr.
[Middle English drinken, from Old English drincan; see dhreg- in Indo-European roots.] |
drunk (drŭngk) v. Past participle of drink. adj.
Usage Note: As an adjective the form drunk is used after a verb while the form drunken is now used only in front of a noun: They were drunk last night. A drunken patron at the restaurant ruined our evening. Using drunk in front of a noun is usually considered unacceptable in formal style, but the phrases drunk driver and drunk driving, which have become fixed expressions, present an exception to this. Drunk and drunken are sometimes used to make a legal distinction, whereby a drunk driver is a driver whose alcohol level exceeds the legal limit, and a drunken driver is a driver who is inebriated. |
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Drunk
Drunk\, a. [OE. dronke, drunke, dronken, drunken, AS. druncen. Orig. the same as drunken, p. p. of drink. See Drink.]1. Intoxicated with, or as with, strong drink; inebriated; drunken; -- never used attributively, but always predicatively; as, the man is drunk (not, a drunk man). Be not drunk with wine, where in is excess. -- Eph. v. 18. Drunk with recent prosperity. --Macaulay. 2. Drenched or saturated with moisture or liquid. I will make mine arrows drunk with blood. -- Deut. xxxii. 42.Drunk
Drunk\, n. A drunken condition; a spree. [Slang]Cite This Source
drunk
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Main Entry: 2drunk
Pronunciation: 'dr&[ng]k
Function: adjective
1 : having the faculties impaired by alcohol
2 : of, relating to, or caused by intoxication : DRUNKEN
Main Entry: 3drunk
Function: noun
1 : a period of drinking to intoxication or of being intoxicated
2 : one who is drunk; especially : DRUNKARD
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Drunk
The first case of intoxication on record is that of Noah (Gen. 9:21). The sin of drunkenness is frequently and strongly condemned (Rom. 13:13; 1 Cor. 6:9, 10; Eph. 5:18; 1 Thess. 5:7, 8). The sin of drinking to excess seems to have been not uncommon among the Israelites. The word is used figuratively, when men are spoken of as being drunk with sorrow, and with the wine of God's wrath (Isa. 63:6; Jer. 51:57; Ezek. 23:33). To "add drunkenness to thirst" (Deut. 29:19, A.V.) is a proverbial expression, rendered in the Revised Version "to destroy the moist with the dry", i.e., the well-watered equally with the dry land, meaning that the effect of such walking in the imagination of their own hearts would be to destroy one and all.
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