skunk

Extremely intoxicated. You're drunk as a skunk, stumbling in here reeking of alcohol! I only meant to stay for one drink, but I wound up getting drunk as a skunk.

Someone or something that is unwelcome or unpleasant. Running into my ex at that important networking event was like encountering a skunk at a garden party.

Very intoxicated. Do you remember last night at all? You were as drunk as a lord!

very drunk. (*Also: as ~.) After his fifth cocktail, Michael was as drunk as a lord. Judy bought herself a case of beer and proceeded to get as drunk as a skunk.

Prov. Everyone should do his own job and not interfere with others.; Each person should do his own dirty work. We weren't supposed to help each other with the homework. "Let every man skin his own skunk," the teacher said.

very drunk He rolled out of the club into a taxi, drunk as a lord. We'd get drunk as a skunk at lunch and sleep all afternoon.

Also, drunk as a fiddler or skunk ; falling-down or roaring drunk . Extremely intoxicated, as in He came home drunk as a lord. The three similes have survived numerous others. The first was considered proverbial by the mid-1600s and presumably alludes to the fact that noblemen drank more than commoners (because they could afford to). The fiddler alludes to the practice of plying musicians with alcohol (sometimes instead of pay), whereas skunk, dating from the early 1900s, was undoubtedly chosen for the rhyme. The most graphic variant alludes to someone too drunk to keep his or her balance, as in He couldn't make it up the stairs; be was falling-down drunk. And roaring drunk, alluding to being extremely noisy as well as intoxicated, was first recorded in 1697. Also see dead drunk.

Extremely drunk. Members of the nobility could afford to keep quantities of wine, beer, and liquor on hand, and as much out of envy as stating a fact, the common folk described anyone, titled or not, who had a load on by that phrase. In these more egalitarian times, “drunk as a skunk” and, less elegantly, “shit-faced drunk” have replaced “drunk as a lord.”