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tired and emotional

adj

Etymology

First used by the British satirical magazine Private Eye in 1967, in a spoof diplomatic memo to describe the state of cabinet minister George Brown. It is now used as a stock phrase and euphemism to avoid litigation for libel, and the phrase has spread well beyond the magazine.

Definitions

  1. Drunk.

    • In 2008, after what you imagine was a tired and emotional dinner, the novelist Michel Houellebecq and the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy determined to start writing to each other about the things that kept them awake at nights.
    • There's nothing like a singalong with tired and emotional Lib Dems [headline]

  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically

    Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see tired, emotional.

    • Andy Murray was tired and emotional – in the old fashioned sense – after becoming the first player in the history of tennis at the Olympics to win back-to-back gold medals in Rio on Sunday night.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for tired and emotional. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA