These memes courtesy of Nicky Mee

What’s with the plural nouns for singular objects? Why is it always a pair of pants? Well, you not only put them on one leg at a time, but they were once made that way. There are many other such words (listed here for ESL students), although some on that list do have singular meanings for the same object. Pair of boots, but you can also have one boot. The somewhat baffling ones include a pair of glasses, scissors, binoculars. As quoted here, the Oxford English dictionary offers guidance “A single tool, instrument, or item of clothing, consisting of two joined or corresponding parts not used separately.”

On LinkedIn, Nicky Mee noted you could turn any word into a synonym for drunk if you add “ed.”

This complements a theory first suggested by comedian Michael McIntyre, who said Britons could understand any word as meaning drunk if it is preceded by ‘I got completely…’

Professor Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer, of Chemnitz University in Germany, believes it may be due to Britain’s deeply-rooted culture of social drinking and Monty Python-style absurdist humour.

Drunkonyms are often achieved through their indirectness. For example, “gazeboed” and “carparked” are funny because there is no direct relation between the base word and the meaning drunk.