Each week The Old Editor will attempt to address your entreaties for information and advice on grammar and usage, writing, writer-editor etiquette, and related subjects.
The Old Editor does not address marital and relationship matters, dietary questions, or automobile mechanics.
The question: A former colleague inquires: "Is 'drunken driving' AP style, or any paper's style?
The Old Editor Answers: The Associated Press Stylebook is emphatic: Drunken is the adjective before nouns: a drunken driver, drunken driving." Drunk may be used after a form of to be: He was drunk.
Let us erect a monument, with inscriptions in Bodoni bold, to bogus precision. Drunken, the dictionaries tell us, is an adjective meaning intoxicated." Drunk, the past participle of drink, is also an adjective meaning "intoxicated." The organization most militantly opposed to drunk/drunken driving is Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
Put "drunk driving" in a Google search, and you get more than 9 million hits (many of them involving MADD). Search drunken driving, and you'll find fewer than half a million. The language moves on, and the AP Stylebook lags far behind it, as usual.
Do you imagine that if you write drunk driving, any reader fail to grasp your meaning? Or grab your lapels and say, "Wait a minute, fellow, don't you mean drunken driving?"
The two terms are functionally equivalent. Use whichever you like. Is it five o'clock yet?
Got a question for The Old Editor? Write to him at john.mcintyre@baltsun.com. Your name will not be used unless you specifically authorize it.