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The English language is well-known for the a great deal of words that reveal the concept of being intoxicated in an amusing method– so-called drunkonyms like “pissed,” “hammered” or “squandered.” British comic Michael McIntyre even argues in a funny regimen that chic individuals can utilize any word to suggest “intoxicated” in English, e.g., “I was entirely gazeboed” or “I'm gon na get completely carparked.” With the myriad of possibilities, how can individuals comprehend brand-new drunkonyms then?
2 German linguists, Prof. Dr. Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer (Chemnitz University of Technology) and Prof. Dr. Peter Uhrig (FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg & & ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig), took Michael McIntyre's claim seriously and evaluated it in a linguistic research study.
“We wondered to learn if the synonyms of ‘intoxicated' are utilized in comparable contexts,” discusses Sanchez-Stockhammer. If that held true, brand-new word developments may acquire the significance ‘intoxicated' immediately from the context.
The research study was just recently released in the Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association
“We discovered that ‘intoxicated' generally takes place in the mixes ‘too/so/very intoxicated,' however all of a sudden not with the type of adverb utilized by Michael McIntyre,” discusses Uhrig. By contrast, the drunkonyms ending in ed (e.g., “blasted” and “filled”) ideally accompany the anticipated intensifiers “totally” or “absolutely” (e.g., “entirely filled”).
As anticipated, the mix of “be” + heightening adverb + word ending in -ed is frequently utilized to describe drunkenness, however seldom adequate to discuss how language users comprehend brand-new drunkonyms. Sanchez-Stockhammer and Uhrig, for that reason, supply an extra description.
By the time English native speakers maturate, they have actually more than likely experienced a lot of various words ending in -ed, indicating “intoxicated” that it enables them to analyze words with unidentified significances ending in -ed (e.g. “pyjamaed”) as “intoxicated” in numerous contexts. The appendix of the paper alone consists of a list of 546 English synonyms for “intoxicated” put together from numerous sources.
Although extreme alcohol intake might include unfavorable effects, drunkenness is typically talked about utilizing a wide variety of light-hearted linguistic ways in English. Sanchez-Stockhammer observes, “The funny impact of drunkonyms is typically attained through their indirectness.”
What renders McIntyre's examples “gazeboed” or “carparked” amusing is that there is no apparent relation in between the base (e.g. “gazebo”) and the significance “intoxicated.” Indirectness is likewise present in other kinds of lively language, like Cockney rhyming slang, which supplies the design for English drunkonyms like “Brahms” or “Schindler's” (brief for “Brahms and Liszt” and “Schindler's list,” both of which rhyme with the target word “pissed”).
“The English language likewise reveals drunkenness indirectly by reducing expressions like ‘blind intoxicated' and ‘perfectly intoxicated' to the matching drunkonyms ‘blind' and ‘well.' All this recommends that drunkonyms suit well with English linguistic and funny customs,” states Sanchez-Stockhammer.
More info: Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer et al, “I'm gon na get completely and absolutely X-ed.” Building drunkenness, Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association (2024 ).
