Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Drunkenness; intoxication by spirituous liquors; derangement of the mental functions caused by drink.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Drunkenness; intoxication by spirituous liquors; inebriety.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun uncountable The state of intoxication, drunkenness.
  • noun obsolete An instance of being drunk.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French ébriété ("drunkenness"), from Latin ēbrietātem, from ēbrius ("drunk").

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Examples

  • But the Nubian had the advantage of a mirror from the brilliant reflection which the surface of the highly-polished shield now afforded, by means of which he beheld, to his alarm and surprise, that the marabout raised his head gently from the ground, so as to survey all around him, moving with a well-adjusted precaution which seemed entirely inconsistent with a state of ebriety.

    The Talisman 2008

  • People at your age are in a state of natural ebriety; and want rails, and gardefous, wherever they go, to hinder them from breaking their necks.

    Letters to his son on The Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman 2005

  • The knight, provoked at this stately declaration, which was the immediate effect of anger and ebriety, eyed his antagonist with a most contemptuous aspect, and advised him to avoid such comparisons for the future.

    The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom 2004

  • The cry of nature hushed every other cry, — she was the only patient in the house who was not mad from politics, religion, ebriety, or some perverted passion; and terrifying as the outbreak of her frenzy always was, Stanton used to await it as a kind of relief from the dissonant, melancholy, and ludicrous ravings of the others.

    Melmoth the Wanderer 2004

  • “Gentle Shepherd,” a couplet, which he right happily transferred from the vice of avarice to that of ebriety:

    The Black Dwarf 2004

  • Yet whatever haste he made to the goal of ebriety, he was distanced by his brother baronet, who from the beginning of the party had made little other use of his mouth than to receive the glass, and now sunk down upon the floor, in a state of temporary annihilation.

    The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom 2004

  • The Albanian captain was at least half seas over when we began the bout, yet he continued to fill and to drain without showing the least progress towards ebriety.

    Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah 2003

  • Need I point out the change that ebriety produces in the moral and social affections?

    Select Temperance Tracts American Tract Society

  • He was waiter and hostler to a village inn; and the scene in which he, upon wine being called for by a customer, produces, condemns, and consumes, a bottle of the "_black seal_" was the perfection of acting, the different phases of ebriety were well portrayed, and in the course of the play, additional red patches appeared upon his face, to show the effects of his habits.

    Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas W. Hastings Macaulay

  • It should be added, what Mr Holmes tells us on good authority, that the vice of ebriety was not among Mozart's failings.

    Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. Various

Comments

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  • When Ernest imbibes in society

    His drinking's done quickly and quietly

    His voice low and whiskeyish

    Condemning "preshcriptivishts"

    Is the sign he's achieved his ebriety.

    Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit

    March 10, 2016