to stank of booze
- idiom
- Informal
:
oler a alcohol
- Her clothes stank of booze after the wild party last night.
Examples
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The room stank of booze after the party.
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When he entered the office, everyone noticed he stank of booze from the night before.
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After returning from the bar, he stank of booze and could barely walk straight.
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He stank of booze when he came home last night.
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After returning from the bar, he stank of booze and could barely walk straight.
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When he entered the office, everyone noticed he stank of booze from the night before.
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Her clothes stank of booze after the wild party last night.
Synonyms
Having a very strong bad smell like smoke or rot
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'stank' (past of 'stink' = give off a strong, unpleasant odor) + 'of' + 'booze' (alcohol) yields 'smelled strongly of alcohol'. The verb + of + noun pattern to indicate the source of a smell is common and cross-linguistically straightforward, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Stank of booze comes from a simple, real image: someone leaving a bar whose clothes and hair smell very strongly of alcohol. Stank is the past form of 'stink', meaning to have a bad smell, and booze is a casual word for alcohol, so the phrase means 'had a strong, unpleasant smell of alcohol'.