DRUNKARD

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does drunkard mean? 

• DRUNKARD (noun)
  The noun DRUNKARD has 1 sense:

1. a chronic drinker

  Familiarity information: DRUNKARD used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DRUNKARD (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A chronic drinker

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

drunk; drunkard; inebriate; rummy; sot; wino

Hypernyms ("drunkard" is a kind of...):

drinker; imbiber; juicer; toper (a person who drinks alcoholic beverages (especially to excess))

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "drunkard"):

alcoholic; alky; boozer; dipsomaniac; lush; soaker; souse (a person who drinks alcohol to excess habitually)

Derivation:

drink (drink excessive amounts of alcohol; be an alcoholic)

 Context examples 

The man was an intermittent drunkard, and when he had the fit on him he was a perfect fiend.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

That jaw was the jaw of the private Charles Fox, the gambler, the libertine, the drunkard.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And—bah! To-morrow I shall pay for it as the drunkard pays.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a drunkard!—as I found out after I had wed the daughter: for they were silent on family secrets before.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself upon his vice, he is once out of five hundred times affected by the dangers that he runs through his brutish, physical insensibility; neither had I, long as I had considered my position, made enough allowance for the complete moral insensibility and insensate readiness to evil, which were the leading characters of Edward Hyde.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard’s blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But the main reason lies in the one fact, which is notorious to everyone, and that is that Sir Eustace was a confirmed drunkard.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

By the light of the corridor-lamp I saw my sister appear at the opening, her face blanched with terror, her hands groping for help, her whole figure swaying to and fro like that of a drunkard.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)