Word.ws English Dictionary

drunken

Syllables: drunk·en/ˈdɹʌŋkən/

drunken is the past participle of drink.

Adjective

drunken (comparative more drunken, superlative most drunken)

  1. Drunk, in the state of intoxication after having drunk an alcoholic beverage.
    • What shall we do with a drunken sailor? […] / Put him in the longboat and make him bail her / Early in the morning.a. 1830, Drunken Sailor (traditional sea shanty)
    • I ask now to put faces to those names and remove all doubt that the songs I've heard sung in your honor were not a drunken bard's attempt to make a few extra coins. This mission is dire and the reward shall fit you well.[…]2014 December 23, Dallas S. Paskell, Medieval, Author House, →ISBN, page 389
  2. (derogatory) Given to habitual excessive use of alcohol.
  3. Characterized by or resulting from drunkenness.
    • a drunken display of crude exuberance
    • Surviving pictures of the accident show the two locomotives leaning at drunken angles, still covered with flags and evergreens—a mixture of comedy and tragedy.1945 September and October, C. Hamilton Ellis, “Royal Trains—V”, in Railway Magazine, page 252
  4. (obsolete) Saturated with liquid.
    1. (obsolete) Applied to various spicy stir-fried dishes in Asian cuisine.
      • drunken noodles; drunken duck; drunken fried rice

Meaning of drink

Verb

drink (third-person singular simple present drinks, present participle drinking, simple past drank or (Southern US) drunk or (nonstandard) drinked, past participle drunk or (chiefly archaic) drunken or (dialectal) drank or (all, nonstandard, archaic or obsolete) drinked or drinken or dranken)

  1. (ambitransitive) To consume (a liquid) through the mouth.
    • He drank the water I gave him.
    Synonyms:
    gulp, imbibe, quaff, sip
  2. (metonymically, transitive) To consume the liquid contained within (a bottle, glass, etc.).
    • Jack drank the whole bottle by himself.
  3. (intransitive) To consume alcoholic beverages.
    • You've been drinking, haven't you?
    Synonyms:
    drink alcohol, booze, hit the bottle, hit the sauce
  4. (transitive) To take in (a liquid), in any manner; to suck up; to absorb; to imbibe.
    • Let the purple violets drink the stream.1697, Virgil, “The Fourth Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC
  5. (transitive) To take in; to receive within one, through the senses; to inhale; to hear; to see.
    • My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words / Of that tongue's utterance.c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
  6. (archaic, transitive) To toast (someone or something) with a drink, honour; to wish well (see drink to), especially
    • Drink to lofty hopes that cool —
      Visions of a perfect State : Drink we, last, the public fool,
      Frantic love and frantic hate.1842, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Vision of Sin”, in The Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate, volume II, London: Macmillan and Co., published 1884, →OCLC, part iv, page 131

See all 20 meanings of drink

Verb

drunken (third-person singular simple present drunkens, present participle drunkening, simple past and past participle drunkened)

  1. (ambitransitive) To make or become drunk or drunken; to intoxicate.
    • Yea, upon a stoned couch and drunkened unto death upon the bittered draught of Rome!1917, Patience Worth, The Sorry Tale, page 153
    • The dreamy coloring of the land is just too drunkening.1985, Kay Dreyfus, Percy Aldridge Grainger, Farthest North of Humanness: Letters, page 31

Synonyms of drunken

Forms of drunken

Adjective
comparativemore drunken
superlativemost drunken
Verb
third-person singular presentdrunkens
present participledrunkening
past participledrunkened
pastdrunkened

Origin of drunken

From Middle English drunken, ydronken, idrunken, from Old English druncen, ġedruncen (“drunk; drunken”), from Proto-Germanic *drunkanaz (“drunken”), past participle of Proto-Germanic *drinkaną (“to drink”), equivalent to drink + -en. Cognate with West Frisian dronken (“drunk; drunken”), Dutch dronken (“drunk; drunken”), German betrunken (“drunk; drunken”), Swedish drucken (“drunk; drunken”).

From Middle English dronknen, drunkenen, drunknen, from Old English druncnian (“to drown; get drunk”), from Proto-Germanic *drunkanōną (“to get drunk”), from Proto-Germanic *drunkanaz (“drunk; intoxicated”). Cognate with Norwegian drukne, drukna, Icelandic drukna.

Words formed from drunken

Phrases with drunken

Words that rhyme with drunken

Questions about drunken

What does drunken mean?
Drunken means drunk, in the state of intoxication after having drunk an alcoholic beverage.
What is drunken the past participle of?
Drunken is the past participle of drink.
What part of speech is drunken?
Drunken can be an adjective or a verb.
How do you pronounce drunken?
Drunken is pronounced /ˈdɹʌŋkən/.

Words near drunken in the dictionary

  1. drunkards
  2. drunke
  3. drunked
  4. drunked up
  5. drunkedness
  6. drunken
  7. drunken boxing
  8. drunken chicken
  9. drunken driving
  10. Drunken Fist
  11. drunken forest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: drunken (page history and authors); drink (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-drunken.ogg.

Cite this entry: “drunken.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/drunken. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.