Zapp! English Colloquial Expressions 3.18 - Alcohol & Drinking
Taught by Katie Wood — Cambridge CELTA · Cambridge DELTA · Cambridge-accredited Teacher Trainer
Recorded and taught by a team of British and North American English teachers, based in Oxford (UK) and Barcelona (Spain).
Katie asks Mark for the most common way to say drunk, and he sighs before answering: "There are many." He isn't exaggerating. Over fourteen minutes the two of them work through ten colloquial expressions for alcohol, drinking and being drunk — and when Katie asks for a polite, indirect one, Mark immediately offers "Twatted?" Katie's reply, "Well that's quite direct isn't it?!", tells you everything about the range this unit covers.
What you'll hear in this episode
Katie leads and Mark supplies the words, often more of them than she asked for. They start with to be pissed, and Mark flags the trap for learners straight away: "the difference in American English, to be pissed is very angry, but in British English to be pissed means very drunk." Katie adds that British speakers say pissed off for angry.
From there they move to drinking fast. Katie sets up the situation and Mark fires back "Neck it!", then "Drill it, tip it!" He explains the image behind it: "It's literally the idea of...well getting it down your neck. Maybe by-passing the mouth." Then comes booze, and the neat family of words around it — a boozer can be a pub, "because that's where you go to consume booze", or a person who drinks a lot.
The pub section is genuinely useful: Mark explains what a round is, step by step, four people and four drinks, and offers "whose round is it?" as the polite way of saying you're thirsty. There's a laugh about beer goggles, and then the second half turns to degrees of drunkenness — tipsy (Katie: "it's not a very macho thing to say is it?"), the euphemism tired and emotional, and trolleyed, which Mark admits he "haven't heard that for a while". His observation at the end is the sharpest thing in the recording.
Quick facts
| Episode | 3.18 |
| Pack | Colloquial 3 |
| Level | 3 |
| Duration | 14 minutes 07 seconds |
| Topic | Alcohol and drinking |
| Expressions taught | Ten |
| Workbook | Included in the all-in-one pack (€39) |
What you'll learn
The language point that makes this unit worth your time is Mark's theory about register. British English, he says, tends to use "these sort of soft little words to actually mean utterly hammered" — words that sound, in his phrase, "like a little cuddly toy" rather than something aggressive. Trolleyed, tipsy, tired and emotional: gentle-sounding, and that gentleness is doing real social work. Once you notice it, you start hearing understatement everywhere in spoken British English.
You'll also pick up how native speakers build meaning from sound and image. Mark unpacks wasted and trashed out loud — "Rubbish, trash, rubbish – trashed" — and does the same with hammered and drilled. This is a useful habit for learners: the metaphor usually tells you the strength of the word.
As listening practice, the conversation is unscripted and moves at natural speed, with overlaps, hesitations, a cough and plenty of unfinished sentences. Katie frequently sets up a gap — I'm a little bit... — and lets Mark fill it, which trains you to predict the next word rather than translate the last one. Between the two conversations, scripted Meaning and Pronunciation drills ask you a question, give the answer, and let you repeat after a beep.
The expressions, with the workbook's warning system
The glossary rates every item: 1 is safe in most situations, 2 is for people you know well, and 3 carries a warning — as the workbook puts it, "Don't use this with your mother-in-law!!!"
- get them in (2) – buy a round / buy the drinks. Katie's example: it's your round. Get them in!
- to neck a drink (2) – drink it very quickly. Also to drill / tip a drink (2).
- booze / a boozer (1) – alcohol / a pub or a person who drinks a lot of alcohol.
- beer goggles (2) – these are not real! This is the idea that alcohol makes everyone look attractive.
- to be pissed (3) – to be drunk.
- tipsy (1) – a little bit drunk.
- trolleyed (1), wasted (2), trashed (2), hammered (2), battered (2) – very drunk.
- tired and emotional (1) – an indirect or euphemistic way to say drunk.
- on the sauce (2) – drinking alcohol; on the lash (2) – going out and drinking alcohol, probably trying to get drunk.
- twatted (3) – very drunk. The workbook is blunt: it is considered quite offensive by some people and is safest to avoid.
What's in the workbook
The workbook for this unit is part of the paid all-in-one pack. It opens with a short introduction reminding you that colloquial expressions belong with friends, not in formal situations, then gives you the full transcript of both conversations with Katie and Mark, so you can read back anything that went past too quickly — the overlaps, the false starts and Mark's aside about a "silly...internet...poster...thing".
After that come the scripted Meaning and Pronunciation sections, written out in full so you can see the prompts and the model sentences: He was completely pissed, Have you bought any booze for the party?, I'm a bit tipsy from those two glasses of wine.
The Extra Materials contain the glossary with its 1–2–3 register ratings, a matching exercise that joins five sentence halves (Oh dear – she can't walk straight. She's absolutely trolleyed.), and a word-search string in which the expressions from the unit are hidden in a run of nonsense letters. Answers to both are supplied at the end.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Common questions
Is the audio scripted?
The conversations between Katie and Mark are unscripted. The teaching sections that set up the tasks and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.
Can I actually use these words?
Some of them, with the right people. The glossary's rating system exists for exactly this reason: tipsy, trolleyed and tired and emotional are rated 1, while to be pissed and twatted are rated 3 and may offend.
Why does the same word mean two different things?
Pissed is the clearest example. Mark spells out the split: angry in American English, drunk in British English.
What level is this episode?
It's Level 3, from the Colloquial 3 pack, and runs 14 minutes 07 seconds.
Do I need the workbook to follow the audio?
No — the audio stands alone and is free. The workbook adds the transcript, the rated glossary and the two practice exercises.
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