Inebriation is the state of drunkenness. Drunkenness, in its most common usage, is the state of being intoxicated with ethyl alcohol to a sufficient degree to impair mental and motor functioning. Common symptoms may include impaired speech, loss of balance, and other effects. Without being inebriated, a drinking person may be described as "buzzed" or "tipsy" while experiencing these symptoms to a lesser degree.

A person who is habitually intoxicated in this manner is labeled an alcoholic, often referred to as a "drunk" (a shortened form of the more traditional term "drunkard") or colloquially by any number of slang terms, such as alkie, waster, wino, lush, soak, etc. The popularity of particular terms, like all slang, varies from region to region.