"Shot In The Neck"

[Josh The Lighthouse Guy]

I've read that "shot in the neck" was a Civil War era euphemism for being drunk. However, this seems like terrible slang because there are also plenty of occasions when someone in the Civil War was literally struck by a bullet between their head and shoulders, and not necessarily fatally.

Does anyone recall any instances of soldiers actually using the slang term in a wartime letter?

Has anyone found instances of the slang meaning being confused for the literal meaning, or vice versa, by later historians? In other words, historians writing about an officer being drunk during a battle in which he was actually wounded, or wounded when he was actually drunk because of confusion over the expression?

 

[Reb]

On the night of Antietam, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was found staggering over the battlefield by one of his friends. When asked what was wrong, the future Supreme Court Justice said he had been shot in the neck. He got a temperance lecture then and there. And how they laughed when when it was discovered he really was shot in the neck.

 

[Patrick H]

Very interesting! I have never previously heard the term. However, having just read Sereant Major Reb's contribution about Justice Homes, I will defer to him!

 

[JPK Huson 1863]

Read that term in a few British histories- did not know it made it over The Pond, interesting! Never heard it used here- but it must pop up somewhere, if it was slang here, too.