Brooke Barbier is the author of “Cocked and Boozy: An Intoxicating History of the American Revolution.”
As a young man, Benjamin Franklin compiled a list of more than 200 words and phrases for “drunk.” Much can be learned about Franklin from the list and, perhaps surprisingly, about Americans even to this day, as the United States commemorates the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding.
Franklin’s “Drinker’s Dictionary” was printed in his newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, on Jan. 13, 1737, and by way of introduction, Franklin included an idiom from his alter ego, Poor Richard: “Nothing more like a Fool than a drunken Man.” He then explained that the terms were euphemisms employed to avoid calling someone drunk, which could sound harsh. But because there was no real way to spin the vice of inebriation into a virtue, Franklin explained, speakers were left with the “wretched Necessity” of expressing the condition “by distant round-about Phrases, and of perpetually varying those Phrases, as often as they come to be well understood to signify plainly that a Man is drunk.”
Franklin’s list of words is great fun. Some we still use today — “intoxicated” and “tipsey,” for example — and others we may not recognize, such as “cock’d,” “pidgeon ey’d” and “oil’d.” The tools and preoccupations of the time are well represented, as in “Loaded his Cart,” “As Stiff as a Ring-bolt” and “carries too much Sail.” Several are charming and lighthearted, like “Cherry Merry” and “Got on his little Hat,” while others are downright ominous: “Haunted with Evil Spirits” and “Like a Rat in Trouble,” reflecting how tipplers can quickly shift from upbeat and congenial to aggressive and belligerent.
And there is a poetry throughout it all, including “Knows not the way Home” and “Seen a Flock of Moons.” My favorite doesn’t roll off the tongue, but it’s evocative and a bit silly, and your meaning couldn’t be clearer if you proclaim, next time you have one too many while out with friends, that you’ve “Swallow’d a Tavern Token.”
The phrases are a part of the cultural fabric, with Franklin explaining that the terms were “gatherʼd wholly from the modern Tavern-Conversation of Tiplers.” Colonists might hear them while imbibing rum punch, cider, beer, wine or grog in a tavern, as they played cards, debated politics or caught up with their social circle.
A few years before compiling the list, Franklin wrote a guide for self-improvement with 13 so-called virtues that he wanted to cultivate in himself. A young man then, he had hopes of “arriving at moral perfection,” and he naively believed it would be simple. Franklin explained, “As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined.” It’s easy to say what one should do, in other words, but habit and emotion can take over. He learned that it just wasn’t as simple as wanting it. “I concluded,” Franklin realized, “that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient.”
Like Franklin, many of us should probably drink less, move more, eat whole foods, stress less, get enough sleep, avoid smoking, wear sunscreen. Every American could recite a handful of things to do to improve their lives. We know what we should do. Except we inevitably fall short.
Similarly, Franklin could advise against drunkenness all he wanted, but that’s not what he practiced. This was a man who loved drinking and the sociability it offered. He praised wine as proof that God loves us. He penned drinking songs and wrote and shared cocktail recipes. He was plagued with gout because, he admitted, he “ate and drank too freely.” He was not committed to sobriety.
It’s tempting to consider this hypocrisy, but Franklin — as Poor Richard — was in on the joke. Alcohol was prevalent in the 18th century, and Americans drank a lot — far more than they do today. Franklin was advising people against drunkenness, but knew they would get “raddled.”
So if you want to implement a new habit or routine, and you’re struggling to do it, first, know that it’s a centuries-old struggle. Second, don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s natural to fall short. Better to channel Benjamin Franklin and at least enjoy yourself as you get “Dizzy as a Goose,” even as you hope to do better tomorrow.
And hasn’t that always been something of the American story writ large? Huzzah to you, and to the Americans who have striven to be their best selves over the past 250 years.
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