These words refer to a person who habitually drinks alcoholic beverages to excess. Alcoholic and drunkard are the most general of these, the first being the more formal and neutral of the two: Drunkard carries a tone of condemnation and can apply justly only to someone who frequently drinks past the point of sobriety: Anyone can see he’s a common drunkard the way he staggers home night after night. Alcoholic was at one time simply a medical description for someone who could not moderated his intake after the first drink. It has since become so popular as a general term that it appears often in informal contexts as well. Even informally the word lacks the tone of disapproval implicit in drunkard . It should be noted, however, that an alcoholic , unlike a drunkard , may have abstained from alcohol completely for years: He used to be a drunkard , but now he refuses drinks at parties by saying , "Sorry, but I’m an alcoholic ."

Inebriate and dipsomaniac are technical terms to describe an excessive drinker, but alcoholic has so widely displaced them that both terms now seem antiquated or fusty. An inebriate , strictly speaking, is a person who is intoxicated at the moment of being described. Dipsomaniac , once the word for a chronic alcoholic (one whose steady intake does not disrupt his living patterns), now might be primarily jocose.

The rest of these words are either extremely informal or slang. A boozer might denote an acute alcoholic , one who alternates between periods of sobriety and intoxication in a pattern disruptive of his normal life. On the other hand, boozer can be used almost admiringly to describe a person who drinks a great deal without losing control of himself.

• He was the most unbelievable boozer I ever saw; he could down six straight whiskies and never bat an eye.

Drunk is, of course, a shortening of drunkard , having greater informality than the latter and a tone of even greater contempt. A sot is one who is drunk most of the time, as is a soak.

Tippler and wino both refer to specific kinds of drinkers. A tippler drinks small amounts at frequent intervals over long periods of time. The word is often used for the secret or private drinker: No one would have guessed that the headmistress was a tippler except the man who carried away the empty bottles. Wino is usually applied to a tramp or derelict whose addiction to alcohol is satisfied by drinking inexpensive fortified wines. It is also used for any heavy drinker whose intake is primarily of wine.