“Talking about your degree“
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Hallo ihr lieben,
and welcome back to our Epic Advent calendar, day number 10.
And Christmas season is not only the time for family, presents, introspection, relaxation and WAY too much food.
It’s also the time to get a little tipsy on Glühwein. Or shitfaced on Gin after that heated discussion at Christmas dinner.
And so today, we’ll do a little round up of
German words for being drunk
We’ll do it “order of appearance”, so we’ll start with being a little bit tipsy. And the German word for that is
beschwipst
Sounds a bit like a little hiccup after a glass of liqueur. And also a bit like bewitched actually.
It’s a really cute word, in my opinion and just like tipsy, it captures the “spirit” of that stage pretty nicely. You know, you’re still in full control of everything but your mood is a little elevated.
At the core of it is the noun der Schwips which is something like a very slight buzz. Originally, the noun described the swaying walk you have when you’re drunk, but over time, it shifted toward more the beginning stages.
- Ich bin ein bisschen beschwipst.
- I’m a little tipsy.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Ich habe einen Schwips.
- I’m a little tipsy.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
It’s not too common, and it’s more fitting for elegant drinking. Like … think of a bunch of ladies having mimosas or a cocktail.
For beer, the next one is the better choice.
angetrunken
One of the ideas that the prefix an expresses is the idea of beginning and that’s what it does here… you’re at the starting stage of drunk. It’s a little stronger than beschwipst in my opinion, but that’s probably subjective.
- Maria war angetrunken.
- Maria was a little drunk.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Now, technically, angetrunken is the ge-form of the verb antrinken, but there’s a noteworthy difference. Because here, the an- expresses the notion of toward.
- Thomas trinkt sich vor dem Date Mut an.
- Thomas gives himself liquid courage before the date.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Thomas drinks courage “to himself”. Didn’t work well for him though, probably because he wanted a little too much courage, and ended up in the next stage.
betrunken
And this is the main German word for actually being drunk.
- “Na, wie war dein Date?”
“Frag nicht. Der Typ war total betrunken.” - “So, how was your date?”
“Don’t ask. The guy was totally drunk.” - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
And of course we also need to mention the verb betrunken is based on… betrinken. Or we should say, sich betrinken, because it’s always with a self reference. And that’s the German word for to get drunk… you “inflict drinking” on yourself.
- “Ein kleines Bier?!”
“Ja, ich will mich heute nicht betrinken.” - “A small beer?!”
“Yeah, I don’t want to get drunk today.” - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Cool.
Now, betrunken is definitely the most common word, but of course German does have a few synonyms for it. Though they’re not actually not as “powerful” sounding as the English hammered, wasted or shitfaced.
Some Synonyms
The first one besoffen which comes from the verb saufen. This verb belongs to the same family as soup, but it shifted toward being the word to drink for animals. And I think it’s not hard to make the transition from there – it’s also a colloquial, rough option for drinking lots of alcohol and besoffen and sich besaufen are basically rough versions of betrunken and sich betrinken.
- Maria geht mit ihren Fußballkumpels saufen.
- Maria goes (heavy) drinking with her soccer buddies.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Puh, ich war gestern total besoffen.
- Phew, I was hammered yesterday.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
Then, there are also the adjectives hacke and dicht and their fusion.
- Thomas ist von zwei Bier schon hacke/dicht/hackedicht.
- Thomas is wasted after two beers already.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
And last but not least, let’s give a shout out to betütert, which I would call the “metrosexual” option. So it doesn’t sound “manly” enough for the “old school” masculine male type but it’s pretty common in Berlin and it’s definitely fun. Like… think of drinking prosseco on ice and mint liquor at a vernissage… that type of drunk. You’re drunk, but you’re fun, positive drunk. Not agro monkey drunk.
And that’s it for today.
And I know that some of you are now like “Emanuel, what about blau?”
Which is a valid question because blau is also a REALLY common option for drunk.
But that’ll get its own door in this calendar. Because this post is already long enough and the story behind the drunk-blau… damn, that is CRAZY!!! Like… legit crazy.
So yeah, let me know in the comments if you have any questions or if you’ve come across any other German drunk words.
Have a great day, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
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I’m a big fan of the word “kampfsaufen”.
My personal favorite is “tanken”. :-)
Ah ja, das gibt’s auch. Das ist eins, dass ich NIE verwende. Wo hast du das gelernt?
There’s an English one that’s probably not very good to recommend, and it is obviously gendered in some respect, but…
“off my tits” = really drunk or even high on a cocktail of substances
It signals the idea of being out of control. It can be used by both guys and girls, and is probably used more by guys – for whatever that’s worth.
Well, guys do get beer tits at a certain age, if they’re drinking too much of it :)
I’ve often heard “three sheets to the wind” as seriously drunk. It must be some sort of sailing metaphor but I know nothing about sailing.
Just catching up on my advent calendars. I am surprised no one has mentioned pissed which means drunk. I am not sure if it is only an Australian term for drunk if you want to act cool and swear? For example: To get pissed or Thomas is a piss-head (Thomas drinks a lot).
Deffo not only Australian. Brits used it too. I would say pissed is regular drunk, not as extreme as wasted. What would you say?
How do you pisstingui… I mean distinguish that from angry?
How do you distinguish that from the angry-pissed?
I mean, with beer, they do overlap, but if I say “I’m pissed mate.” how would Aussies know?
“pissed” to mean angry, is relatively new import from the USA. As an Aussie of a certain age, I still need the “off/with” (or USA “at”?) to clarify anger is intended. “My boss is pissed” vs “My boss is pissed off”
Yep this. In the UK, we would say “pissed off” for angry, but are aware of the US meaning so would usually figure it out if someone used it that way. I think it confuses USians when they first go to a British or Aussie pub though ^^
Examples:
“I’m pissed off” – I’m angry
“Thomas pissed Maria off” – Thomas did/said something which annoyed Maria
“Thomas is pissed off with Maria” – Thomas is annoyed because of something Maria did/said
And:
– Thomas is pissed with Maria.
That would mean both are shitfaced, right? IN the Uk, I mean.
Yes, it would. But you would probably phrase it:
“Thomas and Maria are pissed”
(or past tense: got/were [so] pissed)
E.g. “We got so pissed last night, I don’t know how I made it home.”
(all British vernacular here, but I presume it carries over well to Australian too, just not US)
I’d like to volunteer “wankered” and “wrecked” as additions to the hardcore intoxication vocabulary.
Wankered is a great one!
I haven’t come across the term ‘liquid courage’ but ‘Dutch courage’ is a very common expression. I am not sure about the origin of the reference to people who come from Holland, though
We have the phrase “sich Mut antrinken” but “flüßiger Mut” would not be idiomatic, though people would understand.
I guess I could make a part two about this with verbs for drinking alcohol. I’ll put that on the list :)
Actually, I just realized that I had the term in one of my examples :D. Ignore my earlier comment :)
I’ve heard liquid courage before but I assume it was people wanting to make Dutch courage more PC
“Agro monkey”hahaha
Among the sort of Catholics who tend to quote St. Thomas Aquinas (this is a small subset) it is not unusual to hear them speak of “drinking to the point of hilarity” in reference him writing “Drink to the point of hilarity and no more.”
While I am not an expert of St. Thomas or drinking, I think this corresponds to the “merry” stage mentioned elsewhere in the comments.
That’s not very far in then :)
I have heard “blau” used in this context. Is this correct? If so, where does it fall (so to speak) on your list?
“blau” is pretty much the same as “betrunken”, so basically “drunk”. You can intensify it with “voll” or “total”, if you need to :)
this is a topic my bourbon-infused lips can embrace. interesting how dwds doesn’t bother to give etymology for hackedicht or sternhagelvoll – zu salopp i reckon.
and a big thank-you goes out to deutschland for allowing us back into the hauptstadt on mittwoch – wir machen unsern Deutschunterricht weiter so, versprochen..
Bourbon, hey? Nice :)!
Dwds generally tends to not include compounds. They’re really focused on etymology and not so much the “story” behind a word.
What do you mean by “allowing us back into Hauptstadt”? Were you disallowed before? I’m not following the wheel of regulations at the moment :).
Hello,
One more typo-free day (or at least I can’t find any coz I was at a b’day party yesterday and got a litle beschwipst – true story, not just to tie in with the alco… I mean, article).
There’s a stage in English before tipsy and that’s merry (although that may be subjective). I suppose that would still be beschwipst in German, oder?
And another English word for the had-core version is plastered (equivalent to hammered, wasted and shit-faced), but I think it’s strictly BE, although I’m not sure…
Bis morgen!
Well, I guess you could use “angeschwipst” but in practice it’s the same stage as “beschwipst”.
Is merry ALWAYS understood as slightly under the influence.
Like… I’ll be merrily on my way… would people assume I had some?
“plastered”… I like that. It “sounds the part” for some reason.
No, merry does not always reference being tipsy. I grew up with plastered and wasted. Plastered was only for alcohol but wasted could be for anything that alters ones perceptions. Hammered is more recent but I like that one the most.
As mockyn pointed, merry is a general word for being happy, in a good mood… it’s only understood as slightly under the influence when used in the right context :)
Another one, that came to my mind when you said “context” is
– Ich bin schon gut unterwegs.
-I’m well on my way.
That’s drunk, but not shitfaced yet.
Yeah, I’d agree that “merry” meaning drunk is fairly situational, though it’s other uses are pretty archaic. Another great (British) English word for this early stage is “squiffy”. That’s fairly unambiguous, but probably not one most men would reach for…
You can also use these for being very drunk:
“rat-arsed”
“blind drunk” (probably not very politically correct though, so maybe avoid that one)
“3 sheets to the wind” (i think it’s an old naval reference, as many phrases are in English)
And for beschwipst you can also say “happy” contextually.
But honestly in the right context, *a lot* of words will do the trick.
In the sentence, “I was absolutely ________ last night.” you can fill in the gap with almost any funny-sounding noun-turned-into-an-ed-word (<– fancy grammar term) and people will assume you mean you were drunk, e.g.
"absolutely pine-coned"
"absolutely clothes-horsed"
"absolutely ear-holed"
"absolutely bulldozered"
Etc etc etc.
None of these are real phrases I just made them up. But an English person would figure out what you meant.
I really like pine-coned. That resonated immediately!!! :)
Haha! ^^
Es war sehr interessant, weil Ich nur das Wort “betrunken” gewußt habe.
Doesn’t “blau” mean that one is hungover?
Nope, it’s plain drunk!
Words for drunk… hmm, good question. Does “breit” still work for “drunk”?
One expression that I quite like the associated imagery of, but not so much the state it describes, is “eine Fahne haben”, which I take it means that you’re *obviously* drunk (you absolutely *reek* of booze, you might as well wave a flag!).
Check out this song and you won’t forget that meaning of “breit” ever again. It’s not my normal taste in music, but someone talked me into listening to it and I liked the lyrics.
Ahem… yeah, not really meine Tasse Tee either! “Breit so wie die Ärsche von den Weibern auf”. Sorry, I’m a bit slow on the uptake, and it’s a bit embarrassing to ask, but “breit” is doing double duty here, right? “Wide” as well as “drunk”?
Yeah, just a bit of cheeky wordplay.
Yup, but I still wouldn’t recommend using “breit” for “drunk”.
Ah ok.
So they really know how to do it up rightI totally misunderstood the word.Would you say “geladen” implies alcohol or drugs, or maybe both? In English, I tend to think of “loaded” as being drunk, but really it can include other substances too.
Hmm, I think I’d assume “drunk” for “geladen” but it’s not something I often hear.
Sounds like American folk music to me.
Hmmm, “breit” is one of THE most common words for “high” on marihuana. I’d be confused if someone used it for “drunk”.
While we’re at it, Germany will likely legalize weed.
“eine Fahne haben” … yeah, totally forgot about that one. But you wouldn’t use it to talk about your own drunkness.
It’s a really fun word if you visualize the whiff of booze oozing of one’s mouth… really like a flag.
British English especially has lots of great words and phrases to mean drunk. The flag example above reminded me of one of the more verbose ones: “to be four sheets to the wind”, which I believe is a sailing reference to sails flapping in the wind because their ropes (sheets) aren’t tied down. Are there any good German idiomatic phrases like this one?
Lol I just posted about that one too but I am pretty sure it’s 3 sheets rather than 4.
The internet seems to agree with you, though I see references to every number from one to ten!
Ha! Indeed! Native speaker privilege – use whatever number you want haha!
I’m pi sheets in the wind.
I’m two steam engines in the wind!
There’s
– einen sitzen haben (to have one sitting)
– gut unterwegs sein
– bei X sind die Lampen an
I’m sure there are more, but not as many as in British and I also don’t think we use them as much. We tend to go with the adjectives.
Like stoned in English. Older people (like 70+) might understand it to mean drunk because it did used to be used for that, but nowadays it’s pretty much exclusively used to describe the effect of smoking weed and not really any other drugs.
Whereas “high” could refer to a range of substances (although still probably not alcohol)
“Wasted” is a catch-all for both drugs and alcohol, but implies a much stronger effect, whereas “high” could be much milder.
Thanks! You’ve just given so much nuance to my next Oktoberfest (and also quite an accurate chronological description from beschwipst ’til hackedicht)!
Hahahaha, make sure to also look into the words “kotzen”, “schwindelig” and “Kater”. Oh and “Filmriss” is another good one (not on my site yet).
It’s when you lose part of the memories of the night.
“verkatert” was one of the first words I learnt when I started going out socialising in Austria ^^