gripe

[Victor Steinbok]

  Both "pissed" and "pissed off" are attested in AmE and I would judge
them widespread (I've heard both versions pretty much everywhere I've
been--and they are both even picked up by foreign English speakers,
e.g., the Dutch who've never been in the US). There might be some
distributional difference--e.g., I suspect, "pissed" has a slightly
narrower context, such as "I am pissed" or "This got me pissed", but not
"?I got pissed about Alan's promotion." (To my ear, "pissed off" would
be measurably better here.) Most of the time, however, they are
semi-interchangeable.

I have never heard "pissed"==drunk in the US outside of British TV shows
(or English characters in films). But "get piss drunk" is quite
common--at least among the Boston Irish-American contingent. Then, of
course, there is the indignity of being "piss poor", but, I suspect,
that flies on either side of the Atlantic.

     VS-)

On 10/18/2010 5:56 PM, Robin Hamilton wrote:
>> Note: common British _pissed_ 'drunk' is poorly attested in the U.S.
>> before
>> ca1980 and is still infrequent.  British _piss off_ 'go away' is likewise
>> recent and infrequent here.  I suspect that what currency they each have
>> comes significantly from exposure to British rock culture.
>>
>> JL
> "Pissed" (drunk) and "pissed off" (annoyed, as in "I'm pissed off," "that
> really pisses me off") along with "piss off!" (go away) coexist in current
> British English.  Dunno to what degree some of these locutions reflect
> American usage.
>
> But as for "gripe", there's the possibly analogous British expression, "that
> gives me the gip [sic, pronounced<djip>]", literally, causes a stabbing
> pain in my intestine but more usually found in the metaphorical form,
> "annoys me", "gets right up my nose".
>
> ...

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