Sir Billy Connolly gets his favourite word for being drunk – trousered – into the Oxford English Dictionary… despite not touching a drop of booze since the 1980s
- Scottish comic popularised the word ‘trousered’ meaning being very drunk
- Now it has been accepted into the Oxford English Dictionary – with him credited
- That’s despite the Glaswegian funnyman not touching a drop of booze in years
Sir Billy hasn’t been trousered in decades, but has helped the word get into the dictionary
He may not have touched a drop since the 1980s.
But Sir Billy Connolly has managed to get the word ‘trousered’ – to describe being drunk – into the Oxford English Dictionary.
The comedy legend is mentioned in the latest edition of the tome after being credited with popularising the term.
A new meaning for trousered has been included in the dictionary to reflect it being a slang term for being intoxicated.
The dictionary’s researchers found the earliest printed mention of the word in that context was in a 1977 newspaper interview with Glasgow-born Connolly.
He was describing how he stayed sober until after he came off stage at his shows. He said: ‘After I’ve finished I can get totally trousered along with the best of them. But I never touch the stuff before.’
The official entry for trousered in the dictionary reads: ‘Slang (chiefly British and Irish English). Drunk, intoxicated.’
The dictionary said the word had also been used by English author Niall Griffiths’ in his 2001 novel Grits to describe a drunk character.
Kate Wild, the dictionary’s executive editor, said: ‘The newly added sense of trousered meaning ‘drunk’ expands what is already one of the largest categories, drunk, which contains over 200 words: from Old English fordrunken through to late 20th-century coinages such as wazzed and mullered.’
Sir Billy, 79, previously said he gave up drinking in 1985 after a wild night out with actor Sir Michael Caine.