What is a drunkard?

Someone who is drunk a lot kind of like johnpowell.

Some that drinks a lot, but not an alcoholic. Like, a problem drinker with too much free time.

{looks in mirror}

A drunkard.

It is my understanding that a drunkard is one who is perpetually drunk.

I love this site about drunks, drunkards, and booze.

@buster: bookmarked!

This or this.

How is a drunkard not an alcoholic?

@The_Compassionate_Heretic

The way I think of it, an alcoholic has to drink. A drunkard chooses to drink.

@boots We all have free will and make conscious decisions.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic Ok… So does that mean you don’t believe in alcoholism?

Your response was very cryptic…

Not that cryptic. I was unaware that “drunkard” had a clear cut definition. I always thought drunkard, lush, alchy, boozebag, all referred to alcoholics.
The distinction of drunkards choosing to drink because they like it, is descriptive of an alcoholic that hasn’t yet admitted their problem.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic

The word “drunkard” (for me, anyways) has a different connotation then the other ones you mentioned. Like I said in my first response to you, that’s just how I see it.

”drunkard. The commonest term for one who habitually drinks to excess. The term now implies repetitious misbehavior, distinguished from alcoholic with an implication of involuntary behavior related to disease.” From a 1982 dictionary of words about alcohol.

A current dictionary lists synonyms as: drunk, alcoholic, soak (slang), drinker, lush (slang), carouser, sot, tippler, toper, wino (informal), dipsomaniac.

Equating drinker with drunkard may seem strange but temperance writers tended to make no distinction between a light drinker and a drunkard. The term was commonly used opprobriously by temperance writers at least well into the 1930s after the repeal of national prohibition.

http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/Controversies/Biography-D-Leigh-Colvin.html