booze fighter

A vivid, old-fashioned American slang term for a habitual heavy drinker — someone who is perpetually in combat with (or more accurately, perpetually losing to) their relationship with alcohol. The 'fighter' framing gives it an almost heroic spin, as if the drinking is an ongoing battle rather than a failure. Used throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it appears in old newspaper accounts, temperance literature, and the pulp fiction of the era. Still occasionally surfaces in period pieces and as an ironic self-description.