Tight = drunk

[James Harbeck]

BTW, re: degrees of drunkenness, I have an Irish phrasebook that
includes phrases for several levels of drunkenness -- sugach (tipsy),
olta, caoch olta, ar meisce, ar deargmheisce (this means "red drunk"
-- i.e., plastered). It also has "dul chun drabhlais", meaning "to go
on a spree of revelry and debauchery." Presumably this is something
the authors thought tourists might do while visiting the Emerald
Isle...

Well, one is tempted to haul out the whole Eskimo snow schtick here,
but of course English has at least as many words for drunkenness as
any other language has, and I do think that any society that enjoys
ebriety as a guilty pleasure, enjoyed but rued and looked down upon,
will have a veritable whack of terms for it... Pity most phrasebooks
don't tell you what they are.

James Harbeck.

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