drunk dial

or drunk-di·al

[ druhngk-dahy-uhl, -dahyl ]

verb (used with or without object)

1. to phone (someone) while intoxicated:

   How can you avoid drunk dialing?

   Have you ever drunk-dialed an ex-girlfriend?

noun

1. a phone call made by someone who is intoxicated.

Other Words From

• drunk dialer noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of drunk dial¹

First recorded in 1995–2000

Example Sentences

For Karen O and Danger Mouse, it was a drunk dial in 2008.

From New York Times

Horner was a complicated man, self-aggrandizing and dangerous to some, gentle and generous to others, a loving caregiver to his disabled brother Brian, a solitary figure who struggled with alcohol and drugs and would sometimes drunk dial late at night.

From The Guardian

On A Thousand Horses’s single This Ain’t No Drunk Dial, lead singer Michael Hobby makes a tipsy call to his ex and pleads, “Girl, don’t hang up/I called on purpose/Yeah, I’ve had a few/Hell, I’m hurtin.”

From The Guardian

Out of 486 undergraduates, 79% said they had either placed or received a drunk dial.

From Wall Street Journal

“Besides expressing positive and negative feelings, one type of drunk dial was quite prevalent in our data—the flippant expression of love,” the authors wrote in another version of the study.

From Wall Street Journal