Talk:lush

Slang

I'm not sure the usage of lush as defined in Adjective 4 is peculiar to just to Wales. I've heard it used in this context all over southern England. Not so sure about the north and Scotland. 80.42.137.236 15:45, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Not alcoholic?

Lush means someone who drinks too excess. Alcoholic means someone who is addicted to alcohol. They are not synonyms.

Adjective meaning 'alcoholic'

I suspect the drinking-related sense can also occur adjectivally ("he's very lush, he drinks all the time"), although I haven't been able to find examples. - -sche (discuss) 18:51, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Never come across that. BTW, should it be glossed "US"? I've only seen "lush" for alcoholic in American writing. Equinox ◑ 18:56, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

"Lush" = "alcohol" seems to have originated as British slang ― it's in Mayhew's Lonndon Labour and Reade's It Is Never Too Late to Mend ― though Partridge says it went obsolete and was later revived. All their modern examples (from the 1940s to 1968) are American ― so, {{lb|en|now|US}}? "Lush" = "alcoholic" isn't in older dictionaries I checked (Century and the Imperial Encyclopaedic Dictionary), and Partridge labels it a US sense. (The verb is in the old dictionaries and is labelled "Eng." or "UK", though maybe it too is {{lb|en|now|US}}?) The modern slang dictionaries I checked do have an adjective, which they all label "UK" even though they all cite the same line from American John Clellon Holmes's 1953 Go, "Two years ago I was real lush and drinking a quart a day." - -sche (discuss) 05:37, 13 December 2018 (UTC)