full as a tick

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

full as a tick

1. (simile) Engorged with food or drink, especially alcoholic drink.
   • 1890, Rudyard Kipling, "The Madness of Private Ortheris" in Indian Tales:

     Then we drank up all the beer, and threw the bottles into the water and fired at them. . . . "Stop ut!" shouted Mulvaney. "Whin you've fired into nothin' as often as me, over a better man than yoursilf, you will not make a mock av thim orders. 'Tis worse than whistlin' the Dead March in barricks. An' you full as a tick, an' the sun cool, an' all an' all!"

   • 1904, Andy Adams, chapter 5, in A Texas Matchmaker:

     [B]etween that Dutch cattle salesman and the barkeeper and myself, it would have taken a bookkeeper to have kept a check on the drinks we consumed. . . . Well, I took a seat for a shine, and for two hours I sat there as full as a tick, and as dignified as a judge on the bench.

   • 2001 Sep. 2, Robert Morgan, "Down Home" (book review of Ava's Man by Rick Bragg), New York Times (retrieved 10 Dec 2012):

     Bragg describes his mother Margaret as a girl eating her first hot dog: it "came wrapped in wax paper, the bun warm and soft, the smell of raw onions, spicy meat and chili filling the car, and she rode the rest of the way full as a tick, mustard on her cheeks."

• full as a goog, full to the gills, stuffed

• tight as a tick

• full as a tick at OneLook Dictionary Search