Can anyone explain the term "one over the eight"for drunk?
What sort of drink is it that eight of them leave you fairly sober, bu nine make you drunk?
It appears to be an old superstition.
I draw the line at eight pints.
Nine would just make me silly.
On first blush, it seems to me like it relates to the fact that the “legal limit” for being too drunk to drive in many US jurisdictions is .08 BAC.
So, being “one over the eight” is one point above .08.
But that’s just my interpretation.
I realize that you were just posting a speculation, but I think that explanation is unlikely.
The expression is primarily English, but 0.08% (w/v) is an American standard. AFAICT from the British medical literature I’ve read over the years, they use entirely different units (e.g. 50 mg/dL) Of course, mg/dL is a classic medical unit, and the legal threshold may use a different unit.
Also, the 0.08% standard seems more recent than the expression. IIRC, I first encountered that expression (or something close to it) in the UK in the early 1980s, when the standard in most US states was 0.10%. It was lowered to 0.08% in most states during roughly 1986-1996.