Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day 147

The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the current health crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored….

Half Seas Over

A short definition from the dictionary, this phrase simply means “almost drunk”. It’s perhaps a similar derivative to the word ‘sloshed’, but might just be a matter of being half-way towards a destination and so there’s less of a nautical theme. The phrase was used from around the sixteenth century, but declined in the nineteenth century and is now pretty archaic.