half-real worlds of paper and ink

Ahaha. I had always thought that "punch drunk" was a weird idiom, because how does one get drunk from punch? (Unless it's spiked, I suppose.) It never occurred to me in meant being, you know, punched in the face and ending up dizzy and concussed and all. It's one of those things that never made it to my "look it up in the dictionary" lists.

I eventually did look it up because it was in a fic, and the line went something like "he was literally punch drunk" and I was frowning at that line wondering how it could be literal.

The perils of English as a second language, I suppose. XD