skunk

From Jerry W. Dragoo, Ph.D., Mephitologist, and Research Assistant Professor, Museum of Southwestern Biology, University of New Mexico.:

(We wrote Dr. Dragoo asking him if he was aware of the practice of intoxicating skunks with liquor in order to capture them. We received his reply after last week's issue was published.)

I received a call yesterday (13 Oct) from a British reporter asking the same question. He was doing a story on intoxication. He said the phrase was common in England as well. This is interesting because skunks do not occur in England. There was an article in (I think) New Scientist titled "Drunk as a Skunk". However, it was about the affects of alcohol and the word skunk never appeared in the text.

My understanding has always been that the phrase was common because of the rhyme. I can not think of anything in a skunk's behavior that would indicate the appearance of intoxication, with the possible exception of a disease. A diseased animal (any animal) may stagger or become immobile. However, when I observe an animal acting peculiar, I think diseased not drunk.

Hog-nosed skunks occur throughout South America. The phrase is not known in Bolivia (at least not by my Bolivian colleague). Is it possible that the phrase originated in the 19th c. and the "idea" was adopted by the Brazilians?

As for the etymology of the word skunk, E. T. Seton 1929 in Lives of game animals, Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc. has common names for skunk in several languages. He states the word 'skunk' is traced to the Huron word Scangaresse, and the Abenaki word Seganku. He also says that the Cree, Ojibway, and Sauteaux have a word, Shee-gawk, which is the origin of the word Chicago and means "skunk land". F. Gabriel Sagard-Theodat's "Histoire du Canada" took a different approach and referred to skunks as "les enfants du diable" - children of the devil.

According to the British reporter, this practice of using liquor to intoxicate an animal and then catch it has been used on foxes.

Thanks, Dr. Dragoo, for your informative response. We agree that the English and the Brazilians probably picked up drunk as a skunk from America. By the way, Dr. Dragoo mentions that skunks do not occur in England, and they don't occur outside of the Americas. This is why the animal has a name of Native American derivation.

--From Take Our Word For It--issue 57