If Webb’s Weird Words were a human being, it could pour itself a nice cold beer this week — since this series has now reached 21.

Of course, that’s the number of articles, and not an age in years; but it makes a good excuse to cover alcohol-related vocabulary.

According to Speaking Freely, a terrific 1997 book about American English, the word drunk “has more synonyms than almost any other English word: at least 2,000 of them have been compiled.”

This includes Benjamin Franklin’s trailblazing 228-word list, which he put together way back in 1737. It offers relatively familiar terms such as stewed, buzzed and cock-eyed, along with dandy lesser-knowns: bowzered, oiled, frazzled, pigeon-eyed and cherry-merry.

In Speaking Freely, authors Flexner and Soukhanov go on to list four more pages’ worth, in roughly chronological order — the oldest being drunk, from the 14th century, with boozy, intoxicated and soused following shortly in the 16th and 17th.

My own running list of oddball vocab has 30 — culled partly from Flexner and Soukhanov, partly from wide reading over many years.

Here are a few, in no particular order:

Fuddled – Shortened from befuddled; very appropriate.

Pixilated – Probably from pixie, meaning fairy or elf, with a standard suffix added slangily for whimsical effect. Can also mean eccentric or odd — like a fairy or elf, I guess.

Sozzled – Sozzle is U.S. slang for a state of disorder; as a verb it can mean to get drunk — probably related to the better-known souse.

Squiffy – British slang for slightly drunk; origin unknown.

Shickered – Possibly from a Hebrew or Yiddish term, this is old Australian slang; Dictionary.com tells us shicker is a “disparaging and offensive” word for a drunk, so don’t use that one — especially in the outback, mate.

Splifflicated – Can also mean destroyed or wiped out. Which I guess is kinda the same thing.

Ossified – An actual verb meaning to harden or become rigid (oss- is Latin for bone). Probably in the same class as the more familiar stiff (cf. Franklin’s stiff as a ringbolt).

Temulent – Though of unknown origin and with no other meanings, it’s still a great word — and one of the few here that doesn’t end with -ed.

Others in that category: blotto, lushy, potulent, stinko, inebrious, sottish, tiddly, stotious and — a personal favorite — nimtopsical. Also bibulent — probably from the Latin bib-, meaning drink (as in imbibe).

Plotzed – Plotz is a regular word meaning to set down sharply; as slang, it can mean to faint or collapse, and thus informally also, passed out.

Comboozelated – Another favorite with an unknown origin; likely cobbled together with standard English prefixes and suffixes added to booze.

A few more to finish: woofled, beerified, buoyant, banjaxed, monged, mullered, flooey, groggified, langered, crocko, wazzocked, deleerit, capernoited, buffy, giffed, swizzled, rummish, tanglefooted and, perhaps the most puzzling, organized.

So now you know why these terms aren’t listed in some careful order here; wouldn’t want anyone to accuse me of being organized.

We’ll get back on the straight-and-narrow next week.