fiddler

Extremely intoxicated from alcohol. You're drunk as a fiddler, stumbling in here reeking of alcohol! I only meant to stay for one drink, but I wound up getting drunk as a fiddler.

An invitation given unexpectedly, usually or at the last-minute. No, I think she only invited me because I happened to call her. It's just fiddler's bidding.

obsolete An expression of gratitude and a gift of wine. You cannot just give him fiddler's pay for all his hard work. It certainly warrants fair wages.

To face, accept, or suffer repercussions for one's actions or words, especially that would be expected to incur punishment. (A less common version of "pay the piper.") After three nights of heavy drinking, I'm really going to be paying the fiddler come Monday morning! With the judge handing down the maximum possible sentence, this monster will be paying the fiddler for the rest of his life.

very drunk. (*Also: as ~.) After his fifth cocktail, Michael was as drunk as a lord. Judy bought herself a case of beer and proceeded to get as drunk as a skunk.

Also, drunk as a fiddler or skunk ; falling-down or roaring drunk . Extremely intoxicated, as in He came home drunk as a lord. The three similes have survived numerous others. The first was considered proverbial by the mid-1600s and presumably alludes to the fact that noblemen drank more than commoners (because they could afford to). The fiddler alludes to the practice of plying musicians with alcohol (sometimes instead of pay), whereas skunk, dating from the early 1900s, was undoubtedly chosen for the rhyme. The most graphic variant alludes to someone too drunk to keep his or her balance, as in He couldn't make it up the stairs; be was falling-down drunk. And roaring drunk, alluding to being extremely noisy as well as intoxicated, was first recorded in 1697. Also see dead drunk.

Extremely drunk. Members of the nobility could afford to keep quantities of wine, beer, and liquor on hand, and as much out of envy as stating a fact, the common folk described anyone, titled or not, who had a load on by that phrase. In these more egalitarian times, “drunk as a skunk” and, less elegantly, “shit-faced drunk” have replaced “drunk as a lord.”

Last-minute invitation. The image is a vacancy at a dinner table to which an itinerant fiddler who appeared at the door and asked to play for food was invited to join the household at the table.