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drunken

verbadjectiveverbcommon in dialogue

  • //ˈdɹʌŋkən//

Drunk, in the state of intoxication after having drunk an alcoholic beverage.

verb

  1. 1

    Also a form of drinkarchaicpast participle of drink

Etymology

From Middle English drunken, ydronken, idrunken, from Old English druncen, ġedruncen (“drunk; drunken”), from Proto-Germanic *drunkanaz (“drunken”), past participle of Proto-Germanic *drinkaną (“to drink”), equivalent to drink + -en. Cognate with West Frisian dronken (“drunk; drunken”), Dutch dronken (“drunk; drunken”), German betrunken (“drunk; drunken”), Swedish drucken (“drunk; drunken”).

adjective

  1. 1

    Drunk, in the state of intoxication after having drunk an alcoholic beverage.

    What shall we do with a drunken sailor? […] / Put him in the longboat and make him bail her / Early in the morning.

    I ask now to put faces to those names and remove all doubt that the songs I've heard sung in your honor were not a drunken bard's attempt to make a few extra coins. This mission is dire and the reward shall fit you well.[…]

  2. 2

    Given to habitual excessive use of alcohol.

  3. 3

    Characterized by or resulting from drunkenness.

    a drunken display of crude exuberance

    Surviving pictures of the accident show the two locomotives leaning at drunken angles, still covered with flags and evergreens—a mixture of comedy and tragedy.

  4. 4

    obsoleteSaturated with liquid.

  5. 5

    obsoleteSaturated with liquid. Applied to various spicy stir-fried dishes in Asian cuisine.

    drunken noodles; drunken duck; drunken fried rice

verb

  1. 1

    To make or become drunk or drunken; to intoxicate.

    Yea, upon a stoned couch and drunkened unto death upon the bittered draught of Rome!

    The dreamy coloring of the land is just too drunkening.

    Dogma drunkens the Spirit, and while we indulge in our stupor, it robs us of our innate Spiritually Divine and Creative acuity . . . Love alone provides us with the much needed restorative properties of redemption.

Etymology

From Middle English dronknen, drunkenen, drunknen, from Old English druncnian (“to drown; get drunk”), from Proto-Germanic *drunkanōną (“to get drunk”), from Proto-Germanic *drunkanaz (“drunk; intoxicated”). Cognate with Norwegian drukne, drukna, Icelandic drukna.

Forms

comparative
more drunken
superlative
most drunken
past tense
drunkened
past participle
drunkened
present participle
drunkening
third person singular
drunkens
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).