Meaning:
Shabby or worn through use; drunk.
Background:
The expression `worse for wear' is something of a linguistic oddity in that
it has endured a variety of different meanings, versions and spellings during
its lifetime. Let's start with the spelling indignities. `Worse for wear' or
`worst for wear'? Both of these are found in print but, of course, the phrase
is `worse for wear', the alternative being a simple but sadly commonplace
muddling of `worse' and `worst'. `Worse for ware' and `worse for where' are
also sometimes seen, again occasionally using `worst' rather than `worse',
and there's little better explanation for them other than that some people
can't spell `wear'.
The meaning is clear - `as things are used they deteriorate'. As it became
established in the language `worse for wear' developed into a synonym for
`worn out'. At this stage the variant `none the worse for wear' was coined,
meaning `used but not worn out' and also dragging along its misspelled
`worst/ware/where' versions. The English poet Charles Churchill used that
expression, in a rather backhand compliment to his wife, in the poem The
Ghost, 1794:
Some, in my place, to gain their ends,
Would give relations up and friends;
Would lend a wife, who, they might swear
Safely, was none the worse for wear.
Into the 20th century and the phrase took on another meaning, that is,
`drunk'. This was taken up by the UK tabloid press in the 1960s and has now
superseded `tired and emotional' as the euphemism of choice when describing
some young wag falling out of a taxi at 3am.
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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Happy to learn ``worse for wear'' as a euphemism beating ``tired and
emotional'' for drunk.
In the 1974 movie Chinatown when, toward the end, the villain, Noah Cross,
showed up at his victim's abandoned home to collect his granddaughter from
detective Gittes who found the girl and greeted the latter with
``Well, you don't look too much worse for wear, Mr. Gitts, I must say.''
Here it was obviously meant a compliment although Cross kept pronouncing
Gittes's name without the 'e'.
