Intoxication is the state of being drunk — or a wild elation that feels much the same. Both senses are about losing control pleasantly.
The formal sense belongs to medicine and law, where driving while intoxicated is an offence and alcohol intoxication is a diagnosis, and the word is preferred precisely because drunk sounds like a judgement. The figurative sense covers any overwhelming excitement, so the intoxication of early success is a standard phrase. The root is toxic, since intoxication originally meant poisoning, which is exactly what alcohol does.
1nounintoxicationThe state of being drunk or drugged.
“The report noted a high level of intoxication.”
2nounwildWild excitement or elation.
“There was an intoxication about those first few weeks.”
Practised in A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 34 of A Man Called Ove.
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