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French Synonyms. Les brancards (popular, les brancards de laine = weak or lame legs); des baguettes de tambour (popular = thin legs; properly drumsticks); un bâton de tremplin (mountebanks' = a leg; tremplin is properly a spring-board); des cotrets (popular: 'a fagot'; jus de cotret = stirrup-oil, a 'lathering'); des flûtes or flûtes à café (popular); des flageolets (popular); des gambettes (popular: from O. F. gambe = leg; des gambilles is of similar derivation); des fumerons (popular); des fuseaux (popular: also = a spindle or distaff); des jambes en manche de reste (popular = bandy-legs; des jambes de coq = spindle-shanks; des jambes de coton = weak legs); numéro onze (popular = Shank's mare); des guibes, guiboles, guibolles, or guibonnes (popular and thieves'); des merlins (popular); des fourchettes (popular, literally, forks; fourchettes d'Adam = fingers); les chevaux à double semelles (popular. Cf., English Shank's mare).
Italian Synonyms. Ramo (literally, 'a branch'); calcha; colonna (literally, 'a column').
Spanish Synonym. Gamba (Cf., O. F. Gambe),
1770. Foote, Lame Lover, I. What, d'ye think I would change with Bill Spindle for one of his drumsticks.
1837. Barham, Ingoldsby, 'Lay of St. Nicholas.' He helped his guest to a bit of the breast, And he sent the drumsticks down to be grilled.
2. In sing. (venery).—The penis. For synonyms, see Cream-stick.
Drunk, subs. (vulgar).—A debauch;
by implication, a drunkard. On
the drunk = 'on the drink, i.e.,
drinking for days on end.
1871. Philadelphia Inquirer, 6 July. It seems that Gamble went on a drunk last Monday evening.
1879. G. R. Sims, Dagonet Ballads (told to the Missionary). I was out on the drunk and caught it—lor, what a cuss is drink!
[Among other meridians are drunk as a brewer's fart; drunk as Bacchus; drunk as Chloe; drunk as the devil; drunk as hell; drunk as buggery; drunk as a Gosport fiddler; drunk as a fly; drunk as he (or she) can stick (or hang together); drunk as a lord; drunk as an owl (American, a biled owl); drunk as a tapster; drunk as a piper; blind drunk; crying drunk; pissing drunk; dead drunk; so drunk that you can't see a hole through a ladder; drunk as blazes; and so drunk that he opens his shirt collar to piss; tumbling drunk].
Drunk as Davy's sow.—Excessively drunk.—See Davy's Sow.
Drunkard. To come the drunkard, verb. phr. (colloquial).—To feign drunkenness; also to be drunk.
TO be quite the gay drunkard (colloquial), verb. phr.—To be more or less in liquor.
Drunken-Chalks, subs. (military).—Good conduct badges.—See Chalk.
Drunks, subs. (colloquial).—An abbreviation of 'drunk and disorderly.'
1883. Daily Telegraph, 26 March, p. 2, col. 8. Of the twenty-nine night charges, by far the greater number were of drunks.
1884. W. D. Howells, Lady of the Aroostook, ch. xvii. If you could see how my mother looks when I come out of one of my drunks.
1890. Globe, 26 Feb., p. 1, col. 4. 'A Short Way with drunks.' At Buenos Ayres it is customary to punish drunkards, . . . by setting them to sweep the public streets for eight days or so.
