Lushington

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who habitually drinks alcohol to excess, a drunkard or habitual tippler
2. Slang for someone who regularly drinks heavily and is often intoxicated, a dated term for a drunkard
3. An old colloquial name for a man who is constantly drunk or who drinks to excess as a habit

Etymology: The surname Lushington is English and old, recorded in Middle English as Lustinton and traceable to an Old English personal name, Lusta, joined to the elements "-ing" and "-tun" to mean something like "the farmstead of Lusta's people." Nothing about the surname itself has anything to do with drink. Its modern slang sense came later, through a pun on "lush," the word for a heavy drinker that dates to the nineteenth century. The connection is documented in the 1873 "Slang Dictionary" by John Camden Hotten, which records a Lushington Club on Bow Street in Covent Garden, London. A name borrowed into slang this way, half-hidden behind an ordinary family name, let speakers suggest "lush" while keeping a respectable surface, the sort of wordplay that thrived in Victorian London's drinking and clubbing circles.