Quiz: How Quickly Can You Match the 1920s Speakeasy Slang to the Meaning?

In the 2020s, speakeasies are but a curated novelty and slang a generational status symbol of sorts. But back in the 1920s, the secret lives and language of Americans were a necessity. With beer banned and whiskey barrels bolted shut, hidden watering holes and hooch were the difference between being stone cold sober and splifficated. If you can guess what that means, we've got a quiz that will determine once and for all if your Prohibition vocabulary is the bee's knees.

Did you score a perfect 100% on this '20s slang test? Or are you currently wondering if you qualify as a wet blanket? If you nailed all 23, there's a good chance you could've fit into the era of Art Deco, fringed dresses, and bathtub gin. On the other hand, if you found yourself confused after the fifth booze-related word popped up, don't worry, you just might need a little refresher. Share your score with your fellow flappers and see who really keeps up with the times, both old and new.

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Boozy Buzzwords of the '20s

By the 1920s, "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" had just about as many synonyms for the state you'd be in after drinking them all. Decades before the Jazz Age, English speakers already had a colorful habit of concocting euphemisms for intoxication.

Benjamin Franklin famously compiled more than 200 of them in "The Drinker’s Dictionary," published in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1737. Then came Prohibition in 1920, which put a cork in the sale and production of alcohol. It also stopped Americans from getting hammerish, at least legally. That's when speakeasies took over, bringing a whole new wave of slang with them.

You might have reached "sloshed" or "shmacked" status once or twice, but back then, people weren't just drunk: they were zozzled, ossified, and beyond blotto. Being zozzled—a Roaring Twenties riff on the late-19th-century British slang sozzled—meant you were extremely intoxicated. If someone was ossified, they had consumed so much bootleg booze that they were stiff as stone, or literally "turned to bone."

Moving away from the bar, colorful terms like fried and canned borrowed from the kitchen. An easy way to tell if a friend was fried was if they were pie-eyed: yet another Prohibition-era word for drunk that plays on the glassy, wide eyes resulting from one too many swigs of foot juice (cheap wine) at a juice joint (the secret storefront that supplied it).

The outlawing of alcohol may have been inconvenient to Americans at the time, but it certainly spiced up our lexicon. If you love testing your history and pop culture knowledge with a side of trivia, you'll want to check out the Mental Floss quiz page for daily quizzes for a brain buzz without the booze.

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