“The soil will become intoxicated by all the chemicals that they use to build the buildings.”

This sentence comes from an essay discussing a plan by the city of New Haven to convert a strip of land used by a co-op farm into a combination of mall stores and “clean manufacturing.” My student was considering a compromise proposal whereby the farm would occupy a smaller part of the strip and the development would be built around it. Not a good idea, my student argued, and you can see why: intoxicated soil.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen, or can imagine, a building built by chemicals, but that’s not the fun of the sentence. Construction, especially in these modern times, does involve fuel, solvents, adhesives, finishes, and materials that contain or release chemicals of various sorts, although that’s not exactly what the language says. The first part of the sentence is so much more interesting that we can let the latter go by (although I didn’t in my comments on the paper: I drew an “equal” sign in the margin and slashed it, underlined “chemicals,” “use,” and “build,” and hoped the student would ask for clarification).

No, what’s interesting is the intoxicated soil. Once you start explaining why it’s wrong, you see why it’s so close to being right.

Webster’s New Collegiate provides definitions of three parts of speech.

intoxicate vt -cated, -cating: 1) to poison; 2a) to excite or stupefy by alcohol or a drug esp. to the point where physical and mental control is markedly diminished; 2b) to excite to the point of enthusiasm or frenzy.

Intoxicated adj: affected by or as if by alcohol.

intoxication n: 1) an abnormal state that is essentially a poisoning, as in “intestinal intoxication”; 2a) the condition of being drunk; 2b) a strong excitement or elation.

All these forms have as their root the word “toxic,” meaning “poisonous,” or “toxin,” meaning “a colloidal proteinaceous poisonous substance that is a specific product of the metabolic activities of a living organism and is usually very unstable, notably toxic when introduced into the tissues, and typically capable of inducing antibody formation.”

I don’t think alcohol actually qualifies as a toxin by this definition (chemists and biologists, please correct me!); but there is such a thing as “alcohol poisoning,” and it’s real, so we can at least use the term “toxic” with it. So “intoxicate” by its first definition can apply to alcohol, just as “intoxication” by its first definition can apply to drinking way too much.

But “intoxicated” is dedicated entirely to the effects of alcohol, either literal or figurative.

Well, I’m in love with my student. He eschews the shorter and simpler (and much more acceptable) “the soil will become toxic” and instead goes straight for the far more colorful “the soil will become intoxicated.” Has he decided on his own that this is the correct adjective to mean “poisoned”? Oh, I do hope so. I would far rather that he figured it out for himself than that some thesaurus offered it to him.

He has written a phrase that technically is not wrong, but nevertheless conjures up a delightfully bizarre picture in the reader’s mind (at least if the reader has ever been intoxicated by something other than arsenic or motor oil). Can’t you just see clods of earth reeling around the property, attempting to dance, bumping into each other, singing “Melancholy Baby,” clinging to lampposts, kissing, weeping, ultimately lying down and passing out? Are those sounds we hear coming from the site late at night hiccups?

That’s not a construction site: it’s a party.

Yes, definitely a party. Notice the intoxicated soil?
Image © Parkinsonsniper | Dreamstime.com – Construction Site Photo. By permission.