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Pubs & Drinking

Pub is short for "Public House," and is where you go to drink liquor and eat the strange, and often horrible, British Food known as "Pub Grub" (See: Just about anything up above). Pub food is for sale in pubs for a very good reason: any sane person would only purchase and ingest it after having consumed massive amounts of alcohol.

Off-license - A liquor store. [insert your own humorous comment here].

Pint - This is how you order you beer (or rather, "Bitter") in an English pub. "I'll take a pint of bitter, please." They'll hand you a big mug of foamy, slightly dark beer and you can start in on your evening. One piece of advice: no matter how many pints you've had, do not, I repeat DO NOT fall prey to the temptation of Pub Grub. Just pretend all they have to offer you is beer and cider, and stick to those. Also, that gorgeous and sophisticated woman next to you is not interested in you and has not heard a word you've said for the past 10 minutes. (For those of you too pissed to perform the necessary math, a pint is equal to 16 oz., or a container of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, whichever comes first.)

"Pull a Pint" - In the good old days, and still in some traditional places, the barkeep would pull a pint of bitter for you out of its barrel using a pump. The purists insist that this is the only way to enjoy good, British ale.

Pissed - Totally, dizzyingly, smashingly, frighteningly, you're-gonna-feel-it-in-the-morningly, absolutely, positively, don't-trip-or-you-might-fall-off-the-edge-of-the-Earth drunk.

Pub Crawl - The aquatic maneuver performed by your fingers attempting to fish the change suction-cupped to the bar in the giant puddle of bitter on the counter. No, actually it is the British term for "bar hopping," i.e.: getting slowly pissed over an extended period of time in a variety of establishments.

Punter - A customer. I've never actually heard this term used, but someone told me it's British, so I threw it in. I'm not terribly picky about my sources, and in case you haven't noticed, this is not trying to be an authoritative, or for that matter terribly accurate, dictionary.

Shout - A round, as in "I'll get this round," or, in British, "My shout." When one guys gets drunk enough and wants to impress the woman who he has totally failed to notice is only still sitting next to him at the bar because he has the hem of her dress caught between his bum and the barstool, he buys a round of drinks for the whole bar. This "shout" is usually appreciated by everyone else at the bar (especially the woman who, now that the guy has to stand up to get out his wallet, is free to make her escape out the little window in the Women's bathroom), but it causes a domino effect whereby everybody else is expected to reciprocate the generous gesture until the entire clientele is passed out beneath the bar or the bartender yells....

"Time, people!" - Grab that one last pint and try that one last time to get the cute guy at the end of the bar to notice you—the bartender's about to kick you all out.

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