Crapulence. It’s a word to conjure with, and it may be one you need. Born in the 18th century, it is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “sickness or indisposition resulting from excess drinking or eating.” A secondary definition includes debauchery, in case that’s useful, but at this point in proceedings many of us will be feeling the after-effects of too much “bellycheer”: an even older word that means feasting to some, and gluttony to others.
But it’s the boozy definition of crapulence that probably strikes the loudest chord: an endless cycle of merriment and remorse, chased down with the desperate search for hairs from the dog that savaged us. As Dry January beckons, it may be reassuring to know that none of this is new. The drinker’s lexicon from the past runs a similar gamut from moderate indulgence to peak abandon and on to deep regret.
If you’re a hydropot (someone who sticks to water), the concept of a single month of sobriety may seem preposterously artificial. But those who embrace it view it as an urgent panacea for the one gincident too many and the all-round Christmas carousing that sees them stumbling into the New Year. Those who stay the course boast, with good reason, of unbroken sleep and skin, without the unpleasantness of feeling cropsick, wamble-cropped or, well, crapulent. (They will also have avoided much grumbling in their “arse-ropes”, a glorious old word for the intestines, first recorded in a translation of the Bible.)
The Germans know a hangover as a Katzenjammer, in which the drinker’s moans of woe are compared to the wailing of a very miserable cat. Not for nothing is the word “poison” rooted in the Latin potare, to drink.
The names for drinkers over the centuries are also enlightening. In the Middle Ages they might have been a gulch-cup or swill-bowl, elbow-crooker, malt worm or ale-knight (meaning, at that time, you could be a bellygod and an ale-knight at the same time). The original meaning of “tosspot” was one who tossed back their pot of beer and immediately reached for another. Later on, a heavy drinker also went by the name of a “suck-spigot”, “cup-leech”, “tickle-pitcher”, or “fuddle-cap”.
Other epithets were even blunter. In his Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue from 1785, the lexicographer Francis Grose recorded the language of those whose voices were muted by most dictionary-makers: the highwaymen and publicans, brothel-keepers and cutpurses. He tells us that an “Admiral of the Narrow Seas” was “one who from drunkenness vomits into the lap of the person sitting opposite him”.
Worse still, a Vice-Admiral of those same seas was “a drunken man that pisses under the table into his companion’s shoes”.
Some labels, though less full-frontal, are no less insulting. The word “shot-clog” was created by the playwright Ben Jonson in 1600 for the unwelcome companion you only tolerate because they’re buying the next round. A “lick-spigot”, from the same period, is the person who always seems to turn up as you are opening a bottle of wine. A “lanspresado”, according to an 18th-century glossary of thieves’ lingo, is one who arrives at the pub having conveniently forgotten their wallet.
Several breweries have cleverly latched on to names from this groggy lexicon for their own beers. Jennings’ “Snecklifter”, for example, refers to one who lifts the latch of the local pub, peers through the door, and looks around for someone who might buy them a drink.
One good thing for any Dry January partaker is that they no longer reach shakily for a hangover cure. And we’re not just talking hairs of the dog – an expression born from the superstition that a dog bite could be quickly healed by a poultice containing a hair of the offending animal.
In days gone by, drinkers opted for even more extreme cure-alls, involving the likes of swallows’ beaks and owls’ eggs. Far easier surely is just to drop an amethyst into your glass before imbibing. “Amethyst” is from the Greek for “not drunken”, because the stone was believed by the ancients to hold magical properties that prevented intoxication.
For all its ills, drinking – at least according to the slang dictionary – is second only to money and sex in the priorities of our life. At the last count, English holds more than 3,000 words for the state of being drunk, including “ramsquaddled”, “obfusticated”, “pottical”, and the curious “been too free with Sir Richard”.
There may be a brief hiatus after the indulgences of New Year, but come February the same merry-go-sorry will begin again, crapulence be damned. But if the history of English has one lesson to impart, it’s surely this: go easy on your arseropes.
Susie Dent is a lexicographer and etymologist. Her latest book is Interesting Stories about Curious Words, published by John Murray