The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..
Chirping Merry
A charming way to describe someone who has been drinking perhaps just a little too much, the dictionary defines this as “exhilarated with liquor. Chirping glass, a cheerful glass, that makes the company chirp like birds in spring”. The phrase was also linked with a regional term that was “cherry merry” meaning the same thing, the phrases were in use from the late seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century. It’s quite a polite term, there are much more vulgar ones in the dictionary.