Definition
A drunkard, in legal usage, is a person for whom intoxication has become habitual — not merely one who drinks to excess on occasion, but one whose pattern of drinking is chronic and established. Historical legal authority treats "drunkard" and "habitual drunkard" as synonymous: occasional drunkenness does not qualify; the habit must be settled.
A distinct statutory category, the "common drunkard," applies in some jurisdictions to persons who have been convicted of public drunkenness — or proven drunk — a specified number of times within a defined period. This category carries its own legal consequences separate from the general designation.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A person who is habitually drunk.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who habitually drinks strong liquors immoderately; one whose habit it is to get drunk; a toper; a sot.
The common and legal meanings align closely on the element of habit, but the legal definition does something the ordinary meaning does not: it creates a legal status with enforceable consequences. Being a drunkard in law was not merely a description of character; it was a classification that could trigger guardianship proceedings, grounds for divorce, disqualification from certain legal acts, and criminal sanction under "common drunkard" statutes. The ordinary word carries moral judgment; the legal term carried legal jeopardy.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Habitual drunkard: The baseline legal category. Synonymous with "drunkard" in historical legal usage. Relevant in contexts including divorce grounds, testamentary capacity challenges, and guardianship or conservatorship proceedings.
Common drunkard: A statutory offense category, defined by a specified number of proven or adjudicated instances of drunkenness within a given period. Found in older penal codes and municipal ordinances; largely displaced by modern public intoxication statutes.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a historical minefield. Researchers encountering "drunkard" or "habitual drunkard" in 19th- and early 20th-century sources must identify which legal context is operative — domestic relations, probate, criminal, or civil disability — because the term did different legal work in each. A divorce pleading invoking "habitual drunkard" as grounds is a different creature from an indictment for being a "common drunkard," even though the underlying factual allegations may look similar.
The statutory "common drunkard" category has largely disappeared from modern codes. Researchers using older digests, reporters, or form books should not assume that statutes defining this offense remain in force or carry the same numerical thresholds for proof. State-by-state variation in how many incidents triggered the "common drunkard" designation was significant, and those thresholds rarely matched across jurisdictions.
In probate and guardianship research, "habitual drunkard" appears frequently as a basis for appointing a guardian or committee over a person's estate. The evidentiary standards courts applied varied considerably. Some required proof of continuous or near-continuous intoxication; others required only that drinking had become the person's settled habit, even with sober intervals. This variation affects how historical case law on capacity should be read.
Cross-corpus connections: Cases involving testamentary capacity challenges often turn on whether a testator was a drunkard at the time of execution — a distinct question from whether they were intoxicated at the moment of signing. Researchers working divorce history will find "habitual drunkard" as a named statutory ground in many 19th-century domestic relations codes, sometimes codified separately from "drunkenness" as a lesser ground.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's editions reproduce essentially the same definition, grounding the synonymy of "drunkard" and "habitual drunkard" in Massachusetts and Rhode Island authority. The 2nd edition adds the "common drunkard" statutory category with the important qualification that the numerical trigger varied by state — a gap the 1st edition leaves entirely unaddressed.
What neither edition adequately addresses is the functional divergence across legal domains. The definition reads as uniform, but courts applying it in divorce proceedings, probate courts, and criminal courts were not always using the same evidentiary standard. Webster's 1913 aligns almost perfectly with the legal definition on the element of habit, which obscures rather than illuminates the legal significance: the common word and the legal term look identical, but only the legal term carried status consequences.
Neither edition addresses the eventual statutory obsolescence of the "common drunkard" offense category or its absorption into broader public intoxication and disorderly conduct frameworks in the 20th century.
Jurisdictional Note
The "common drunkard" offense was defined by statute and varied by state in both the number of qualifying incidents and the method of proof. Many such statutes were repealed or fell into disuse during the latter half of the 20th century. Modern equivalents, where they exist, are typically framed as public intoxication or disorderly conduct offenses without the habitual-status designation.