About

"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"

"You ask a glass of water."

— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Table of Contents

Introduction

A drunkonym is a word for being drunk.

A drunktionary is a collection of drunkonyms.

Drunkonym.com is a drunktionary, taking the simple linguistic observation that in the English language, any noun can be turned into a drunkonym via the suffix of 'ed'.

We take this observation to the extreme by creating a drunktionary of almost every noun in the Wiktionary.

Academic Foundation

Drunkonym.com is inspired by Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer and Peter Uhrig's 2024 article "I'm gonna get totally and utterly X-ed." Constructing Drunkenness in the Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association. In this they examine drunktionaries of the past (including Benjamin Franklin's Drinker's Dictionary), previous works in the important linguistic field of drunkonyms, and cultural observations such as British comedian Michael McIntyre's posh drunk words bit, and they produce an appendix of 546 words to mean drunk.

The Linguistic Principle

But there's an important point in these, that any noun can mean drunk in the English language by suffixing 'ed' or a variation of. Drunkonym.com takes it to the logical extreme — by creating them all.

Using Wiktionary English nouns as a source, we have produced over 400,000 drunkonyms. Many of these have also been assigned a name from the Anglosphere in their examples. You can search for yours.

Technical

The Rules

The following are considered V1 of The Drunkonym rules.

Pruning

We remove the following:

  • Emojis
  • Plurals
  • Most punctuation, non-latin characters and diacritics. Most words like this tend to have an anglicised or fully written version which remains.

Rule 1: Special Character and Capitalization

  • Last character is uppercase → append "'d"
  • Word is all caps → append "'d"
  • Word contains numbers → append "'d"
  • Multi-word/hyphenated entries:
    • If final part contains numbers → apply "'d" to entire entry

Rule 2: Words Ending in 'e'

  • Add 'd'

Rule 3: Words Ending in 'y'

  • Vowel + 'y' → add 'ed'
  • Consonant + 'y' → change 'y' to 'i' and add 'ed'

Rule 4: British-Style 'el' Endings

  • Words ending in 'el' → always double 'l' and add 'ed'

Rule 5: Vowel + 'c' Endings

  • Word ends with vowel + 'c' → add 'k' before 'ed'

Rule 6: 'qu' Pattern Words

  • Pattern 'qu' + vowel + consonant → double final consonant and add 'ed'

Rule 7: Special 'p' Doubling

  • Ends with 'p' AND short vowel (a,e,i,o,u) before it AND unstressed syllable → double 'p' and add 'ed'
  • Exception: -lop/-lope family words → no doubling, just add 'ed'

Rule 8: Special 'n' Doubling

  • Ends with 'n' AND short vowel (a,i,o,u - excluding 'e') before it AND unstressed syllable → double 'n' and add 'ed'

Rule 9: CVC Pattern (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant)

  • Sub-rule 9a: Never Double w/x/y
    • Final consonant is 'w', 'x', or 'y' → just add 'ed'
  • Sub-rule 9b: Vowel-h Endings
    • Words ending in vowel + 'h' → never double the 'h', just add 'ed'
  • Sub-rule 9c: Two-Syllable Words with First Syllable Stress
    • Final 'l' → always double (British style)
    • Final 't' after 'u' → double the 't'
    • All other consonants → no doubling
  • Sub-rule 9d: Three+ Syllable Words with Non-Final Stress
    • No doubling → just add 'ed'
  • Sub-rule 9e: One Syllable OR Final Syllable Stress
    • Double the final consonant and add 'ed'

Rule 10: Default Rule

  • All other cases → simply add 'ed'

Capitalization Preservation

  • Root portion → copy capitalization from original word
  • Suffix portion → use lowercase
  • Special handling for acronyms → preserve original pattern exactly

IPA Pronunciation Guides

Take these with a pinch of salt and consider them artistic flare only. Very little effort has gone into seeing if they are accurate.

Site Hosting Specifics

While being a fun experiment in linguistics this is also an experiment in static site generation and hosting. All drunkonym.com pages are pre-generated looking to use minimal HTML/CSS/JS, trying to keep the site fast and ensuring low hosting costs and very little ongoing maintenance. This comes with a few tradeoffs however.

Data Sources

Our name examples are sourced from official statistics across the English-speaking world:

Content Disclaimer

Disclaimer: Whilst Wiktionary is a neutral reference of language (the good and the bad), an effort has been made when generating our drunkonyms to reduce source words that serve only to direct hate towards marginalised groups. No doubt some have slipped through the net but these do not reflect the views of the authors.

References

  1. Sanchez-Stockhammer, C., & Uhrig, P. (2024). "I'm gonna get totally and utterly X-ed." Constructing Drunkenness. Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association. https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/gcla-2023-0007/html
  2. Franklin, B. The Drinker's Dictionary. The Pennsylvania Gazette. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-02-02-0029
  3. McIntyre, M. Posh Drunk Words. https://www.facebook.com/reel/8980548522049964
  4. Wiktionary Contributors. Category: English nouns. Wiktionary. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_nouns