inebriated

/ɪnˈibrieɪɾɪd/

/ɪnˈibrieɪtɪd/

Inebriated is just a fancy way of saying drunk. If you see a man staggering down the street grasping a bottle of rum in his hand, chances are he's inebriated.

When you want to use an impressive word to say that someone is drunk, go ahead and use inebriated. If you like, you can also use it to refer to someone who is intoxicated with substances other than alcohol, but at its heart, inebriated simply means tanked, blotto, stinko, drunk. In more recent years, it has taken on the sense of being particularly energized or zany and exhilarated with drunkenness, but still drunk.

Definitions of inebriated

1. adjective

   stupefied or excited by a chemical substance (especially alcohol)
   “helplessly inebriated”

   synonyms: drunk, intoxicated

   bacchanal, bacchanalian, bacchic, carousing, orgiastic

   used of riotously drunken merrymaking

   beery

   smelling of beer

   cockeyed

   very drunk

   potty

   slightly intoxicated

   bibulous, boozy, drunken, sottish

   given to or marked by the consumption of alcohol

   drugged, narcotised, narcotized

   under the influence of narcotics

   half-seas-over

   British informal for `intoxicated'

   high, mellow

   slightly and pleasantly intoxicated from alcohol or a drug (especially marijuana)

   hopped-up, stoned

   under the influence of narcotics