Definition:

slang : mildly drunk

About the Word:

If the number of words that a language has to describe a specific thing somehow reflects on the people who speak that language, then the English-speaking people (or at least our collective livers) are in a rather sorry state.

We have hundreds of words describing alcohol and its various effects.

One article in The American Journal of Psychiatry from 1900 counted over 350 synonyms for drunk. Just among the forms that begin with 'drunk as a' we see that someone can be as drunk as an ass, a boiled owl, a brewer’s horse, a drum, a fiddler, a fish, a fly, a lord, a mouse, a pipey, a tapster, a rat, a sow, and a wheelbarrow.

Sometimes, however, one is only half-of-an-ass drunk or less. Fortunately English allows for more precise measurement - as with jingled, which describes those only mildly drunk.