Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

inebriated

UK/ɪˈniː.bɹi.eɪ.tɪd/US/ɪˈniː.bɹi.eɪ.tɪd/
adjectiveC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechneutralformal · an editor’s judgement

Inebriated means drunk, and unsteady with it. The long word for a short condition.

English has an enormous vocabulary for being drunk, and inebriated sits at the formal end of it, alongside intoxicated and under the influence. That formality is the whole point: a police report, a hospital note or a solicitor writes inebriated because drunk sounds like a judgement and inebriated sounds like an observation. Used in conversation it is comic, and deliberately so — describing a friend as slightly inebriated is a joke about the word, not about the friend. The noun is inebriation.

Definitions of inebriated

  1. 1adjectiveinebriatedDrunk.C1

    “The guests were becoming noticeably inebriated.”

    synonyms: intoxicated, tipsy

Where it comes from

Inebriated is made drunk. Latin ēbrius meant drunk and inēbriō to intoxicate, from a root that meant nothing more than to drink.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *h₁egʷʰ-

  2. Proto-Indo-European

    *h₁ēgʷʰ-ryo-s

  3. Proto-Italic

    *ēɣʷrios

  4. Latin

    inēbriātus

  5. English, today

    inebriated

Built from

  • inēbriō · Latin — intoxicate
  • *h₁egʷʰ- · Proto-Indo-European — drink

From Latin inēbriātus, past participle of inēbriō (“intoxicate”) from in- + ēbrius from Proto-Italic ēɣʷrios, from Proto-Indo-European h₁ēgʷʰ-ryo-s from root h₁egʷʰ- (“drink”); whence also ebrious and inebriate.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 2 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

inebriated in the wild

  • The act alternates between musical numbers and long, seemingly inebriated monologues by Kiki.

    Kiki and Herb

  • In Greek mythology and religion, the thiasus was the ecstatic retinue of Dionysus, often pictured as inebriated revelers.

    Thiasus

  • According to legend, he spiked the rebel leader's well with Atholl brose, leading to an inebriated enemy and the rebel leader's capture.

    Atholl brose

  • There were many accidents involving inebriated men, and the crime rate was high for the size of the community.

    Mondak, Montana

  • Known for his signature portrayal of inebriated characters, he earned the nickname "Thagubothu" (transl.

    Thagubothu Ramesh

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.