Oferdrynce

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Overindulgence in alcohol, leading to intoxication, as recorded in Old English texts
2. The act or state of drinking to excess, a term found in early English writing
3. Immoderate consumption of strong drink, the condition of being drunk in Old English usage

Etymology: "Oferdrynce" is an Old English noun, and the story it tells is about a word built from two plain parts: "ofer," meaning "over" or "beyond," and "drync," meaning "drink," the same root that survives in modern "drink" and "drunk." Put together, it literally meant "too much drinking," a compound that needed no metaphor to be understood. The word is recorded in the Old English period, before the Norman Conquest, and it shows the language's habit of stacking prepositions onto nouns to describe excess. English has long had this pattern, as with "overeating" or "overkill," and the Old English vocabulary had its own set of such compounds. Its survival is limited, though. The word did not carry on into the medieval and modern language in common use, and it now appears mainly in dictionaries and in discussions of early English vocabulary.