The town drunk (also called a tavern fool) is a stock character, almost always male, who is drunk more often than sober.
The town drunk typically dwells in a small enough town that he is the only conspicuous alcoholic. Larger cities may have more than one, but this term appears to come from around the 17th century; in the stereotype, when a city grows large enough to house a sufficient mass of town drunks, the area where they congregate becomes known as Skid Row.
Read more about Town Drunk: Uses in Fiction, Antecedents
Famous quotes containing the words town and/or drunk:
“This was the most completely maritime town that we were ever in. It was merely a good harbor, surrounded by land, dry if not firm,—an inhabited beach, whereon fishermen cured and stored their fish, without any back country.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No temperance society which is well officered and which has the real good of our fellow-men in view, will ever get drunk save in the seclusion of its temperance hall.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)