What it really means
English has never been short of words for being drunk. It is shorter of words for being a bit drunk, which is where half-rats comes in.
J. Redding Ware recorded it in Passing English of the Victorian Era (1909) and dated it precisely: 1897, right at the end of Victoria's reign. His label is Peoples', the tag he used for everyday popular speech, and his definition is as tidy as the condition is not: Partially intoxicated.
The rats is the curious part. Green's Dictionary of Slang traces it to an older comparison, drunk as a rat. Why a rat should be drunk is anyone's guess — English similes for drinking are famously unreasonable, and the same century gave us drunk as a boiled owl. But if a full-blown drunk was rats, then the stage before it — merry, loose, a little too loud — was half-rats.
Ware's dictionary has neighbours for it. Right below half-rats sits half up the pole, street slang for half drunk. Victorian English, it seems, had a whole scale for the evening, and half-rats sat near the bottom of it.
It is a useful word for that in-between moment, and a gentler one than most of the alternatives.
Where it comes from
partly
from 'drunk as a rat', per Green's Dictionary of Slang
Green's Dictionary of Slang links it to the older simile 'drunk as a rat'. Half-rats is halfway there.
- 1897
The date Ware attaches to it, labelled 'Peoples'' — his tag for ordinary popular speech.
- 1909
Ware's Passing English of the Victorian Era: 'Half-rats (Peoples', 1897). Partially intoxicated.'
In real life
- Two glasses of fizz at the office party and Margaret was half-rats and telling everyone about her holiday in Crete.
- He wasn't drunk, he insisted, merely half-rats — a distinction lost on the taxi driver.
- By the time the speeches started, the best man was half-rats and the bride's grandmother was fully rats.
Questions
Q01What does half-rats mean?
Partly drunk — tipsy. J. Redding Ware's Passing English of the Victorian Era (1909) defines it as 'partially intoxicated' and dates it to 1897.
Q02Why rats?
Green's Dictionary of Slang connects it to the simile 'drunk as a rat'. To be half-rats is to be halfway to that.
Q03Is half-rats real Victorian slang?
Yes, from the very end of the era: Ware dates it to 1897, four years before Queen Victoria died. His dictionary is the only source we found for it.
Sources
- J. Redding Ware, Passing English of the Victorian Era (1909), full text — 'Half-rats (Peoples', 1897)'.
- Green's Dictionary of Slang — half-rats, adj.
- Mental Floss — Victorian slang list (includes half-rats).