What means ';drunk as a skunk'; besides the rhyme why would they allude to a skunk as drunk?

';Drunk as a skunk'; (meaning ';extremely inebriated';) cannot be pinned on the habits of Mephitis mephitica, the charming North American mammal and member of the weasel family which takes its name from the Algonquian Indian word meaning ';urinating fox.'; The term ';drunk as a skunk'; is, simply a good example of our love of comparisons and rhyming, made especially popular by the fact that ';skunk'; happens to be one of the few words that rhymes with ';drunk.'; Similar, albeit non-rhyming, terms for ';extremely drunk'; have included, over the years, drunk as a fly, a log, a dog, a loon, a poet, a billy goat, a broom, a bat, a badger, a boiled owl, and several dozen more too risqu茅 to list here. Although comparative terms for drunkenness have been popular throughout the history of English, ';drunk as a skunk'; seems to be a fairly recent (20th century) addition to the canon.What means ';drunk as a skunk'; besides the rhyme why would they allude to a skunk as drunk?
From the website I cited below, ';Most etymological sources agree that the term drunk as a skunk arose due to its rhyme. Prior to its appearance in English there were several other drunk as a ____ phrases, some dating back to Chaucer's time. Lord was skunk's immediate predecessor, the notion there being that the rich could better afford alcoholic drink than the common folk.';What means ';drunk as a skunk'; besides the rhyme why would they allude to a skunk as drunk?
I think its mainly based on the fact that it rhymes!





But if i think about it abit more indelth, i realise another probable reason...





a skunks Odour is intoxicating, and to be intoxicated means to be drunk... so maybe thats another way of looking at it?
I think it's just the rhyme factor at play here. in my experience skunks are very sober, solid, serious creatures, and I've never seen one fail to recite the alphabet backwards.
you would have to ';cool as a moose'; to understand
maybe it has nothing to do with skunks drinking too much, and it was just chosen as skunk and drunk rhyme...





drunk as a moose or drunk as a possum just don't sound the same..
because when some people get drunk and


neglect themselves they really start to


smell really bad.
I would say ';no';.