Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Adjective Phrase 26. The adjective phrase
today is blind drunk. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. If someone is
blind drunk he or she is extremely drunk. Or so intoxicated remember,
intoxicated is another word for drunk that one may have trouble seeing. If
someone gets extremely drunk, he or she could temporarily have blurred vision.
You know, where things are not clear. You can't see the sharp images or you know
blurred vision, it's almost like you're wearing somebody's glasses where their
eyes are a lot worse than yours. That's kind of like blurred vision. Or double
vision. This is actually possible. You could get it from a hit in the head but
it is possible to get it from drinking too much. You could get so drunk that you
could look and you start to see two of everything. That's what they refer to as
double vision. So, so today we mean it this way. So if we say somebody's blind
drunk. It's like extremely drunk to really to an excessive degree. Almost to
the point that it could be like this. Okay now, let's continue with the note.
Let's kind of see where the idea came from. The term blind drunk actually was
used before and during the time of Prohibition. Remember the time when
alcohol was illegal in the United States. Because many bootleggers ... so these are
people that made the alcohol illegally. And sold it. That's a bootlegger. They sold
moonshine. Well that's how they referred to the illegal alcohol itself is as
moonshine. That contained methanol to increase the potency to increase. The
potency means to make it stronger. They wanted to make the alcohol even
stronger. So some of them, some bootleggers sometimes added this
substance to it. Okay as little as four milliliters of methanol could lead to
blindness. So this is really truly blindness Too much meant that all
could damage or kill optic nerves. Now today you don't have to worry today. You
know as long as you're not buying moonshine. if you buy alcohol from you
know a normal liquor store, all this is very strictly enforced. You know, about
the quality of it and they don't allow those substances in it. I don't know I
mean if somebody had moonshine up in the mountain somewhere I'm not so sure I
would do it. Even though I think even bootleggers today know that you
shouldn't add this. So I think even they don't do it. So probably it won't really
lead to blindness today. But the term has stuck around from that time. So we you
can't literally or you probably wouldn't literally get blind today from drinking
too much, but there was a time and if you bought you know moonshine from the wrong
person ... you never know, it could , it happen. All right. Anyway, let's look at some
examples as how we still may hear this phrase used today. He got blind drunk
from playing drinking games with his buddies from college. Yeah. Yeah , all those
drinking games where they challenged each other to drink or they I think one
is called quarters where they bounce a quarter in a cup and then they force
somebody to drink it or something like that. There's a lot of different types of
drinking games. But that's a good place where you could get really really drunk.
All right number two. He walked in the door at 3:00 a.m. blind drunk tripping over
things in the living room. Yeah maybe he came in and he couldn't even see where he
was going. All right. Well number three. I am not
surprised to hear you passed out. You were blind drunk. Okay. This is just the
way we hear it. This is the way you may hear it used. Anyway I hope you got it. I
hope it's clear. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.