VINOLENT/ˈvaɪnələnt/

Addicted to wine; intemperate or drunken.

In the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote “In woman vinolent is no defence, This knowen lecchours by experience”, meaning that lechers succeed by getting women drunk. This is easily the most famous appearance of the word in literature, because vinolent was never common and has become even rarer since his time (though a Web search did turn up a firm apparently willing to print the word on a T-shirt for you; if you wore one it might provoke spectators to ask whether you were boasting or complaining).

I thought it had quite dropped out of daily use, but then instances emerged from the interstices of the Internet. The Business Law Journal of January 2005 has: “During this term, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments on a matter that will have broad economic impact for winemakers and vinolent consumers.” Hugh and Colleen Gantzer turned it into a noun in the Business Traveller in August 2002: “But then, not even the most dedicated Swiss vinolent can hope to taste all the great, and subtly evolving, wines of Switzerland!”

These suggest that the word has lost its links with intemperance and drunkenness and has taken on a meaning of “lover of wine”. This is a pity, etymologically speaking, since its source is the Latin word vinolentus, meaning drunk on wine, from vinum, wine. That also bequeaths us vine (the first part of vinolent is said the same way).

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