Orey-eyed: an eggcorn from the old days?

[Douglas G. Wilson]

Recently Quinion discussed "orey-eyed" (also "ory-", "orry-", "orie-",
"oary-", later "awry-", later [I think] rarely "hoary-"), which is used
like "wild-eyed" but which apparently usually meant "drunk" originally.

The etymology is mysterious. What is "orey"? Suggestions have included:

1. An alteration of "awry".

2. Scots "oorie" (something like "eerie" but according to SND extending to
"dissipated"/"debauched").

Here are a few more possibilities, maybe no worse than the above:

3. An alteration of "hoary" (cf. "blear[y]-eyed", apparently the favorite
"-eyed" word for drunks pre-1900).

4. Scotts "orrie", variant of "orra" (equivalent to English "odd" =
"mismatched"; cf. "cross-eyed" used for "drunk").

5. "Orey" = "like ore"/"metallic" (both "glassy-eyed" and "lead-eyed" have
been used for drunks).

I cannot find any evidence to support any of these five speculations.

I find "orie eyed" from 1884 in a fanciful context which I can't interpret.
I find "orie eyed" = "drunken" from 1892.

If the "orey" part is inexplicable, is the "eyed" part dependable?

There was a popular form of brass which closely resembled gold, called
either oroide or oreide, introduced in 1857, I think.

Apparently "oreide" was homonymous with "orey-eyed" and in fact ....

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_Kansas City [MO] Star_, 10 June 1900: p. 7:

[ways to describe a drunk]

<<"... he may be half-seas-over, three sheets in the wind, off his trolley,
.... / "Or he may have a jag on, a load on, a skate on, .... Or he may be
oreide, or have tumbled off the water wagon, or ....">>

----------

_Lincoln [NE] Evening News_, 10 Aug. 1903: p. 2:

[subtitle; article about the incarceration of the drunken Louis Smith]

<<Mrs. Louis Smith Gets Her Oreide Husband Out Of Peculiar Troubles.>>

----------

... and there are some more such instances of "oreide" = "drunken".

Does this have any relationship to the etymology of "orey-eyed"? I don't
know, but ....

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_Fort Wayne [IN] Sunday Gazette_, 29 April 1883: p. 7:

<<Why / .... / Can't these oreide dudes inderstand that they are many
removes from the genuine articles?>>

----------

I do find one early instance of "oreide" taken to mean "yellow", in a joke.
Relevant? I don't know.

-- Doug Wilson


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