How does pissed meaning drunk inherently make any more sense than pissed meaning angry?
I'm not saying it does. But "pissed off" is a phrase that is understandable anyway, means the same as the American meaning of "pissed", and "pissed" by itself is confusing vis a vis the British meaning of "drunk". Plus, as I said, the American usage is inconsistent, because to my knowledge, nobody really says "this really pisses me", but rather "this really pisses me off", even in the US.
But, since a few people have commented on this, I was only half-serious in my original post. Apparently it didn't come across very clearly in text.
Okay, there's a painfully simple misunderstanding here that would give me an aneurysm if I didn't make an account to quickly clarify.
"Pissed" is an entirely separate word from "pisses", and only the former is used in American English to denote a state of anger. To denote someone's anger, they
can be "pissed", but it
cannot "piss" them. You can be pissed off, and it can piss you off, but you can only be pissed, as it cannot simply "piss" you. "Pissed" is the only form of the word that functions as a status, but it is also generally only used without appending "off" when it is performing double-duty by
also serving as a past tense. So "I am pissed off", but "I was pissed". That said, it also works that way with future sometimes, as one often "will get pissed" moreso than "will get pissed off".
A good parallel is "stresses/stressed". You can be stressed, and something can stress you out, but you can only "be stressed"-- something cannot "stresses you" or "stress you", as that is taken to mean that it "emphasizes" you. One simply does not say "that stresses me", they say "that stresses me out", to clarify their context a bit more.
It's acceptable because of this nuance-- and having no way to know that context is hopefully what frustrated you so. Excuse if my explanation is lacking, in any case; I'm far better at spotting miscommunication than actually solving it, unfortunately.
Still, the sheer glut of miscommunication that surrounded your question, though, had me really pissed. I mean, it always pisses me off when the nature of someone's question is misunderstood (as everyone just ends up in some pissed off debate). But really, it does suck when everyone is getting pissed about how pissed off everyone else is rather than trying to find where communication first broke down.
...Anywhos, just had to get that off my chest. Not trying to dredge up old topics, but that was distracting me from what was going to just be laughing at Pintsize paying in $2 bills-- which I've not seen someone able to spend here in, like, a decade or so. Unless it makes some crazy resurgence in QC's timeline!?