Meaning:
Euphemism for drunk.
Background:
The British satirical magazine Private Eye has been poking fun at prominent
people for many years and has, as a consequence, often been sued for libel.
In the 1960s the Eye needed a way of pointing out that someone was a drunkard
without saying it explicitly and the formula they opted for was `tired and
emotional'; which their readers came to understand but which wasn't
unequivocally defamatory. The expression may not have been coined by Private
Eye writers but they certainly popularised it.
The most celebrated use of the phrase, in a modified form, was in regard to
the Labour Cabinet Minister George Brown. A September 1967 edition of Private
Eye contained this:
Mr. Brown has been tired and overwrought on many occasions.
Whether they used `tired and overwrought' or `tired and emotional', as was
used several times later, they had a ready defence which was that the
expression was ambiguous. They could also point to it being used without any
implication of drunkenness in other reports, for example this piece from the
Edinburgh Evening News, June 1926:
A small grey-haired woman with a tired and emotional voice.
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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I'm glad I came from a sober culture (or just the sub-culture I grew up in).
Poverty used to help. These days, my countrymen chase money and power like
everyone else but few take to the bottle. We have no less problems, and I've
seen young people addicted to cheap, soulless pop songs, a big part of the
population devote life, likely cut short, to mouth pleasure, foods that please
only the palate, but not many fortify themselves throughout the day with, say,
snorts of Redstar ErGuoTou. When one does get hammered, he can slug it out or
puke in bed, but rarely we see him show up tired and emotional at work.
