fox-drunk

comparative more fox-drunk · superlative most fox-drunk

1. Crafty and sneaky when drunk.

   […]the eighth is fox-drunk, when he is crafty-drunk, as many of the Dutchmen be, that will never bargain but when they are drunk.

   1592, Thomas Nashe, Pierce Penniless, His supplication to the Divell

   3 more examples

   The sixth and last animal of our menagerie is the fox-drunk man. He is crafty, ready to trade horses and cheat if he can. Keen to strike a bargain, leering around with low cunning, peeping through cracks, listening under the eaves, watching for some suspicious thing, sly as a fox, sneaking as a wolf, he is the meanest drunkard of them all.

   1867, Rural New Yorker, volume 18 (1867), New York [etc.] Rural Pub. Co. [etc.]

   The fox drunk is just as easy to spot as the wild one especially late at night. He does everything just a little too perfectly to be true. On an open highway or turnpike he drives nice and steady but about five to ten mph below the limit. In the suburbs, he spends too much time when he stops for a stop sign and there is no traffic around.

   1961 June 29, Mechanix Illustrated 1961-06: Vol 57 Iss 6, volume 57, number 6, Time Incorporated, →ISSN

   […]So much tiptoeing hither and thither, like a thrush! I pretended to use the necessary but hid my money and watch there." "Fox-drunk! You was fox-drunk, Poli."

   1989, Porter, Hal, The tilted cross, St. Lucia, Qld., Australia: University of Queensland Press, →ISBN, →OCLC