10 Retro Expressions for Describing a Hangover

While the word hungover succinctly captures the aftermath of excessive drinking, it’s far from the only term ever used. History offers a treasure trove of quirky and forgotten phrases to describe this state. From ale passion to vinnecky-vasky, here are 10 delightful old-fashioned ways to express your post-party woes.

1. Ale Passion

Contrary to what it might sound like, ale passion doesn’t refer to a love for beer—it’s the discomfort that follows overindulgence. In the past, passion meant “a painful condition or affliction,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Though the term faded by the 17th century, it was notably used in a 1593 tale about Bacchus’s Pentecost festivities.

In the tale, a courtier named Gotfrey Grouthead arrives at the celebration carrying “a pouch filled with woodcock heads, their brains mixed into a special sauce” as “a reliable remedy for the ale-passion or a throbbing headache.” While marinated bird brains might not qualify as a scientifically proven hangover cure, they’re certainly not the strangest remedy in history.

2. Chippy

The lively and spirited term chipper has a less pleasant counterpart: chippy, a Victorian-era word used to describe the feeling of being hungover or generally unwell, particularly in the morning. Its origins remain a mystery. Green’s Dictionary of Slang proposes it might derive from cheap, which also described feeling ill (especially in the morning). However, the OED leans toward chip, in the sense of a “broken fragment,” as the root of the term.

3. Crapulous

While crapulous might appear to describe simply “feeling awful,” the two craps involved have distinct roots. Crapulous originates from the Latin crapula, which translates to “drunkenness” or “hangover.” By the late Middle Ages, English speakers adopted crapulous to denote “excessive indulgence in drinking or eating,” as noted by the OED. By the 18th century, its meaning expanded to include the unpleasant effects of overdrinking—essentially, making you feel terrible.

4. Crawsick

Crawsick is an 18th-century Irish term for hungover that remained in use through the 20th century; James Joyce even referenced it in Ulysses. Craw refers to the stomach, so the phrase literally means feeling nauseous—though it’s versatile enough to describe any form of post-drinking misery.

5. Like a boiled owl

The phrase “as drunk as an owl” has been used by English speakers since at least the mid-1600s. While its origins remain unclear, the radio show A Way with Words once proposed that the connection might stem from owls’ glassy-eyed appearance, their habit of regurgitating food, and their awkward flight when disturbed.

No owls were harmed in the evolution from as drunk as an owl to as drunk as a boiled owl or as drunk as a stewed owl. The terms boiled and stewed simply meant “intoxicated.” By the 19th century, people began comparing themselves to boiled or stewed owls when feeling worn out, sick, or both—common symptoms of a hangover.

6. Fishy about the gills

“You look fishy about the gills” is a distinctly Victorian expression to imply someone clearly overindulged the night before. As James Redding Ware noted in his 1909 book Passing English of the Victorian Era, “Alcohol causes the corners of the mouth to droop, creating a squared appearance in the lower cheeks or gills, reminiscent of the gill plates on fish.”

7. Hot coppers

Have you ever woken up after a night of heavy drinking with a parched, burning sensation in your mouth and throat? That’s what’s known as hot coppers. This phrase, which emerged in the early 1800s, likely draws inspiration from the large copper pots used for cooking and laundry in the UK, referred to as coppers.

American author George Ade referenced this sensation in the song “R-E-M-O-R-S-E” from the Broadway musical The Sultan of Sulu, which debuted in late 1902. The character mourns the 23 cocktails he consumed the previous evening:

“Last night at twelve I felt immense,Today I feel like thirty cents.My eyes are bleared, my coppers hot,I’ll try to eat, but I cannot.”

Hot coppers and blurry vision seem like minor consequences compared to surviving a night of nearly two dozen cocktails.

8. Katzenjammer

Katzenjammer, meaning “cats’ wailing” in German, served as a lively term for hangover from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. It also referred to feelings of depression, chaos, or any “unpleasant aftermath,” according to the OED. The term gained fame through the comic strip Katzenjammer Kids, introduced by Rudolph Dirks in 1897 and continued by other artists. The main characters, Fritz and Hans, weren’t hungover—they were simply mischievous.

9. Monday head

The Monday following a weekend of heavy partying often brings a throbbing headache and other signs of a brutal hangover. In the late 19th century, English speakers coined the term Monday head for this phenomenon. Wadham Peacock captured society’s shared Monday struggles in his 1910 poem for The Sketch, titled “The Mondayish Feeling”:

“Laymen, going by rule of thumb,Have known for ever so longThat Monday’s the day when everyoneAnd everything goes wrong.But they’ve taken it all as a matterof course,Shrugged their shoulders, and said,‘It’s that end-of-a-holiday,After-a-jolly-day,Old-fashioned Monday head.’”

10. Vinnecky-vasky

As noted by Green’s, vinnecky-vasky was a Victorian-era phrase meaning “enduring and grumbling about a hangover.” It appears just once in historical records—in an 1850 slang dictionary by Edward Duncombe (or possibly his brother John, depending on the source). While vinnecky-vasky may lack extensive documentation, its charm lies in how delightful it is to say out loud.