DINNER PARTY INTEL: Liquor’s latest lexicon
Seldom at a loss for words to describe their drinking, Brits have now taken to ‘drunkonyms’ to describe their overindulgence
1. School fleece
Martin Oosthuizen High School in the Northern Cape town of Kakamas is living out a nursery rhyme. It has adopted an orphaned dorper lamb that has been officially enrolled as a pupil in grade 8. The newcomer is fed by a local co-op and fawned over by pupils, teachers and even the principal.
2. Hunt canned
While one school took a sheep into its care, another sought to cull a lion. Futurum Academy in Jan Kempdorp, also in the Northern Cape, planned to offer a canned lion hunt as one of its prizes in a fundraising evening this week. The hunt was part of an auction and the prey a lioness that had been roaming a farm in the area. But an outcry led to the idea being canned.
3. Tipple tattle
Linguists have discovered that in English any noun can be transformed into a synonym for intoxication, or “drunkonym”, by adding the “-ed” suffix. Prof Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer, of Chemitz University of Technology in Germany, provided examples such as “trolleyed”, “hammered”, “wellied” and “steampigged”. She put it down to Britain’s drinking habits and “absurdist sense of humour”.