Word.ws English Dictionary

one over the eight

one over the eight adjective: drunk.

Adjective

one over the eight (comparative more one over the eight, superlative most one over the eight)

  1. (colloquial) Drunk.
    • “Actually,” said the Captain, “and strictly between ourselves, mind, I was run over by a tram in Stoke-on-Trent when I was one-over-the-eight.”1928, Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall
    • Around 11pm BB King appears onstage, much of his audience one over the eight, talkative but mellow, ready for what is (in my book at least) the experience of a lifetime.2012 October 6, Ed Vulliamy, “BB King at 87: the last of the great bluesmen”, in The Observer

Noun

one over the eight

  1. (colloquial) One or more servings too many of alcohol, leading to drunkenness; one too many.
    • “She’s had one over the eight,” grinned the driver. Audrey’s first impression was that the man was speaking of her, and she wondered what he meant. But he was looking beyond her, and, following the direction of his eyes, she saw a sight that first sickened and then moved her to pity. Clinging to...1924, Edgar Wallace, The Face in the Night
    • In the evening a middle-aged orderly stopped me in he corridor. He had had one over the eight.1972 September 26, G.M.Shimanov, translated by The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia in Canada, Abuse of Psychiatry for Political Repression in the Soviet Union, U.S. Government Printing...

Examples of one over the eight in a sentence

  • To put it mildly, Brendan, you don't appear at your best on television when you've got one over the eight.2016, E. H. Mikhail, editor, Brendan Behan: Interviews and Recollections, volume I, Springer, →ISBN, page 147:
  • “She’s had one over the eight,” grinned the driver.1924, Edgar Wallace, The Face in the Night:
  • Unfortunately he always had one over the eight.2011 June, Celia Parson, Yo Yo, page 95:
  • Rena’s simply had “COPY” printed across it in bold red letters; mine had a few squiggly lines resembling the track left by a snail which has had one over the eight2011, Eilidh Nisbet, Giddy Old School: The Diary of a Swot 1948-1951:

Forms of one over the eight

comparativemore one over the eight
superlativemost one over the eight

Origin of one over the eight

1920s UK origin, from the idea that one can drink eight pints of beer without getting drunk.

Questions about one over the eight

What does one over the eight mean?
One over the eight means drunk.
How do you use one over the eight in a sentence?
To put it mildly, Brendan, you don't appear at your best on television when you've got one over the eight.
What part of speech is one over the eight?
One over the eight can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near one over the eight in the dictionary

  1. one of those things
  2. one of us
  3. one off the wrist
  4. one on one
  5. one or two
  6. one over the eight
  7. one pair
  8. one pairs
  9. one percenter
  10. one percenters
  11. one point

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: one over the eight (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.

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Cite this entry: “one over the eight.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/one_over_the_eight. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.