The most famous animal plural is the plural of the word octopus.
Perhaps in no area is English stronger and more vibrant than in the number of words that it has for state of being drunk.
Coming up on Word Matters, Thomas gnashes use of animals as metaphors for those who imbibe heavily,
and what is up with the varied plural forms for animal names?
I'm Emily Brewster and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.
On each episode, Merriam-Webster editors Amin Shea,
Peter Sakalowski and I explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point.
One could very well argue that categorization without words is impossible.
16th century satirist Thomas Nash used words to categorize drunkards,
and Ammon thinks enough of those categories that he wants us to discuss them.
The English language is particularly rich in many areas,
but one area is in the kind of bewildering number of synonyms that we have for certain words.
And perhaps in no area is English stronger and more vibrant than in the number of words that it has for state of being drunk.
This comes up in a variety of different ways.
In the 18th century,
Benjamin Franklin wrote a pamphlet and published it of several hundred different words for being drunk.
And more recently, Paul Dixon wrote a book with the title, Drunk,
in which he compiled almost 3,000 specific words for being drunk throughout the ages.
We have so many words that lexicographers can't even manage to agree on what seems like fairly narrow semantic terrain.
For instance, in 1623, Henry Cochrum defined the word perpotation as ordinary drunkenness,