drunk as a wheelbarrow
British and Australian slang simile meaning absolutely, thoroughly, completely drunk — the kind of state where you need as much help staying upright as an empty wheelbarrow does.
Definitions
British and Australian slang simile meaning absolutely, thoroughly, completely drunk — the kind of state where you need as much help staying upright as an empty wheelbarrow does. The comparison to a wheelbarrow is delightfully absurd, which is entirely the point: the more ridiculous the comparison, the more vividly it conveys the scale of intoxication. It sits comfortably in a long tradition of creative British and Antipodean drunk-as comparisons, each one trying to outdo the last in comic invention.
By the time we got to the third pub, he was drunk as a wheelbarrow and barely managing to navigate the pavement.
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(slang, simile) Thoroughly drunk.
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