Dictionary

piss artist en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Etymology

From piss + artist, variously from pissed as a synonym for drunk, take the piss out of as synonym for mock, and piss as a general term of contempt.

Meanings

1. (Australia, Ireland, UK, slang, vulgar) Someone who is frequently drunk.
   • He pulled over to the roadside the policeman walked up to the door Goth had got the window wound down by now, all the copper said to him “get out the van Goth” he just fell out the van laughing, the policeman saying what’s funny Goth. He then said I am painter and decorator by trade and you said it get out the van Goth, Van Goth is a famous Dutch artist, so the policeman replied this you are a piss artist, he then said to Goth get the rear light sorted out, because next time I’ll charge you with a defective rear light. 2006, James T. Long, Knights of the Far East, page 144:
   • I despised people who got drunk, I referred to them as ‘piss artists, and I had nothing but contempt for them, nothing but contempt for these people, who fell around drunk, who were incoherent when they spoke. 2015, Mary Addenbrooke, Survivors of Addiction: Narratives of Recovery, page 77:
   • “Yeah, but I’m no drinker, I’m a drunk. A piss artist, a tosspot. I’m sloshed 24/7. Last week I had to use a rope to keep my trousers up, because I was trembling so hard each morning that I couldn’t be arsed with a belt.” 2014, T.M.Simmler, In Vino Veritas:Shaking Frenzy, page 73:
2. (UK, slang, vulgar) Someone who frequently ridicules or shows contempt for others.
   • […]the strap-line on the neon sign set over the entrance of the three-storey mock Art Deco building proclaims. Lit up there, in glowing red and yellow, is a cheese-ball that looks like a piss artist's impression of the HIV retrovirus. 2012, Chris Kerr, As Seen on TV:
   • Just as aspirant poets are weighed down with the weight of prior aesthetic achievements and are driven by an Oedipal desire to supersede their literary forebears, so too todays band of offensive advertisers are beset by the saprogenic accomplishments of the promotional piss artists of times past, P.T.Barnum in particular. 2001 June 7, Stephen Brown, Marketing: The Retro Revolution, page 218:
   • And to create a diversion you have been suing Thomas Ferreira for torture and barbarous acts, on the simple grounds that he supposedly, I quote 'hung your client upside-down above a toilet bowl full of excrement, wrists and ankles bound with scotch tape, wrapped in high-tension electric cables corroded by acid?' Facts for which there is no proof, other than a photograph of the toilet bowl […]He logged in as administrator but couldn't identify Juliette's computer. Impossible to get his hands on it. And yet she had to be connected to the network? The junior piss-artist had managed, therefore, to set up her own firewall, she was undetectable, a regular submarine. 2015, Pascale Pujol, Little Culinary Triumphs:
   • Piss-artists all of them, charlatans who'd rather paint a cold fish than a ripe peach. 2009, Siriol Troup, Beneath the Rime, page 83:
3. (UK, slang, vulgar) Someone who is incompetent, often a person who purports to be competent yet consequently produces botched results.

Forms