drunk as Chloe
adjEtymology Possibly a reference to the Chloe mentioned in the poetry of Matthew Prior. * Australian vernacular usage (reported by Partridge and others) is influenced by, and often thought to refer to, the well-known nude painting Chloé, which was hung briefly (in 1883) at the National Gallery of Victoria, and later (from 1908) at the Young and Jacksons hotel, Melbourne.
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Australia, UK, Colloquial Very drunk.
- 1823, Drink, entry in Jon Badcock, Slang: A Dictionary of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase, the Pit, or Bon-Ton, page 71, Drunk as Chloe; she must have been an uproarious lass.
- Sorry to observe that Seymour had ‘been at his tricks,’ and was as drunk as Chloe ! — as the saying is ; but as to who Chloe was, my reading never informed me.1840, Charles Dickens, William Harrison Ainsworth, Albert Smith, “The Journal of Old Barnes, the Pantaloon: On a trip to Paris, in 1830”, in Bentley's Miscellany, volume 5, page 466:
3 more examples
- They were all as drunk as Chloe, and I being a little in a sympathetic condition, they took me into their confidence.1859, Melbourne Punch, volume 8, page 40:
- They passed many merry-makers homeward bound, many of them following a tortuous course, for the Scottish toper gives way first in the legs, the Southron in the other extremity, and thus between them could be constructed a man wholly sober and another as drunk as Chloe.1896, J. M. Barrie, Sentimental Tommy, The Echo Library, published 2007, page 99:
- It was a regular thing for many of the clergy to be as drunk as Chloe on Saturday night, get through their sermon on Sunday morning, and get drunk and sober again before the evening.1904, New Zealand House of Representatives, chapter L, in Parliamentary Debates, page 53: