Honouring Bacchus – Dem Bacchus huldigend: degree of alcohol consumption in German and Spanish phraseological expressions

Abstract

The habit of drinking alcohol in company has been a social act in all cultures since antiquity. At the same time, it gradually changed from being the act of sharing a few drinks with a group of friends to being the occasional excessive consumption of alcoholic drinks or, in some cases, becoming a regular form of excess. The latter has led linguistic communities to demonise the situation and regard it as a taboo subject that should not be referred to openly but rather via a series of euphemisms intended to tone down reality. A great many of these euphemisms consist of phraseological expressions that use metaphors, comparisons, descriptions apparently unrelated to the subject of alcohol consumption, etc. to describe reality without actually naming it outright. This paper describes these German and Spanish phraseological units, the parallels and differences between them, both in cultural and formal terms.