drunk / drunken As an adjective, the form drunk is used after a verb while the form drunken is now used only in front of a noun. Thus you should say They were drunk last night and A drunken waiter at the restaurant ruined our evening. Using drunk in front of a noun is usually considered unacceptable in formal style, but the phrases drunk driver and drunk driving, which have become fixed expressions, present an exception to this. Drunk and drunken are sometimes used to make a legal distinction, whereby a drunk driver is a driver whose alcohol level exceeds the.
