In Australian English there has always been a distinction between "pissed" (intoxicated) and "pissed off" (angry, irritated).
I've noticed a trend towards the American usage where "he was really pissed" is now much more likely to mean the latter.
I'm aware of the futility of resisting the natural evolution of language, particulary the juggernaut of American language imperialism via films and TV, but it seems a shame that "I did it because I was pissed" is now ambiguous.
Is this a trend in other English speaking countries where the Australian usage was common?
Best Answer
Harold Wentworth & Stuart Flexner, Dictionary of American Slang, first edition (1960) has this entry for pissed off:
This edition of Wentworth & Flexner has no entry for pissed in the sense of drunk.
Robert Chapman & Barbara Kipfer, Dictionary of American Slang, third edition (1995) shows some evolution in the variant wordings used:
This edition of Chapman & Kipfer has no entry for pissed in the sense of drunk, either.
I remember that people began shortening pissed off to pissed (still with the meaning "angry") during the middle 1970s, because I had a roommate in college at that time who used to counsel anyone who confessed to being "pissed off" that "It's better to be pissed off than pissed on." He told me that the truncated form pissed had ruined the fine edge of his wise saying.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Eric Partridge, Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, first edition (1937) reports a very different meaning of piss off:
And for "pissed," the same edition of Partridge has this:
As of the fifth edition of Partridge (1961), the dictionary still had no entry for pissed or pissed off in the sense of "angry." However the eighth edition (1984) has these additions:
It thus appears that U.S. English slang and British English slang ran on separate tracks for a long time, but that both now acknowledge and use the "angry" sense of pissed off. Further, I'm quite familiar (conversationally) with pissed in the sense of "drunk," so that meaning of the term must have become at least somewhat naturalized in parts of the United States in the past two decades.