Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day 206

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….

Mauled

This is one of the definitions which sounds more modern, it’s “extremely drunk or soundly beaten”. I can imagine a group of lads in Wetherspoons saying that they’re mauled today, so sometimes word meanings can linger. The word ‘maul’ actually comes from the Latin word of ‘malleus’ meaning hammer and it’s fair to say that being hammered is now a common word for being very drunk.