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sober
in a sentence
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sober as in:  Talk to me when your sober.

show 10 more with this conextual meaning
  • I'm worried about her. I seldom see her sober and without a hangover.
  • Apparently, while he was still sober, Hans was invited to the stage to play the accordion.   (source)
  • It looks as if he's had his own stylist because he's clean and groomed and about as sober as I've ever seen him.   (source)
  • Also, he'd rarely been sober since we had arrived in Welch, and I was afraid that if I told him, he'd show up at school snookered and make things even worse.   (source)
  • An the realization made him pull himself together in an instant, the way you got sober in an instant when the cops pulled you over, and he felt better, because now he knew what he had to do.   (source)
    sober = stop feeling drunk
  • I couldn't tell if Two-Bit was drunk or not. It's kind of hard to tell with him—he acts boozed up sometimes even when he's sober.   (source)
    sober = not under the influence of alcohol
  • The Cut burst in and the suddenly sober patrons overturned tables and trampled one another in their efforts to flee.   (source)
  • I've never been this sober around people this wasted, and I say a brief prayer that I'm not half as annoying as they are when I'm drunk.   (source)
  • When he's sober, you should tell him that it's getting out of hand.   (source)
  • He turns in his seat to look at us and explains, "They're just doing one of those sobriety checks."   (source)
    sobriety = the state of not being under the influence of alcohol
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show 23 more with this conextual meaning
  • He was employed in a vague personal capacity — while he remained with Cody he was in turn steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even jailor, for Dan Cody sober knew what lavish doings Dan Cody drunk might soon be about, and he provided for such contingencies by reposing more and more trust in Gatsby.   (source)
    sober = not under the influence of alcohol
  • Once we saw a man, who seemed not quite sober, passing along a street in front of us.   (source)
    sober = unintoxicated (not under the influence of alcohol)
  • He's the best naturedest old fool in Arkansaw—never hurt nobody, drunk nor sober.   (source)
    sober = not drunk
  • "Why, this is what I want—and just shake yourself sober and listen, will you?" said Godfrey, savagely.   (source)
    sober = not under the influence of alcohol
  • He was sober enough, and that surprised me.   (source)
  • "When he's sober, I've never heard him say one negative thing about you," says Peeta.   (source)
  • "You don't interfere with my drinking, and I'll stay sober enough to help you," says Haymitch.   (source)
  • Dad was so eager to hear how the interview went that he was not only home when I got back from school, he was even sober.   (source)
  • By then he'd not only beaten back the TB, he'd been sober longer than any time since the Phoenix detox.   (source)
  • He's never sober!   (source)
  • Do you think he'll stay sober?   (source)
  • He had a one-room apartment over a garage, enjoyed doing the repairs and upkeep on the old lodge, loved being back within walking distance of untamed country, and was staying sober.   (source)
  • He'd been stone-cold sober since entering the hospital, and reading a lot more about chaos theory, particularly about the work of Mitchell Feigenbaum, a physicist at Los Alamos who had made a study of the transition between order and turbulence.   (source)
  • The hall was at present occupied by two deplorably sober men and their highly indignant wives.   (source)
    sober = not under the influence of alcohol (or very serious)
  • Well, it WAS pap, sure enough--and sober, too, by the way he laid his oars.   (source)
    sober = not drunk
  • He used to always whale me when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though I used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around.   (source)
  • Everybody that could get a chance at him tried their best to coax him off of his horse so they could lock him up and get him sober;   (source)
    sober = to stop being drunk
  • "Well," I says, "when I see the king in that doggery yesterday I says to myself, we can't get him home for hours, till he's soberer; so I went a-loafing around town to put in the time and wait."   (source)
    soberer = less drunk
  • And take care to keep sober to-morrow, else you'll get pitched on your head coming home, and Wildfire might be the worse for it.   (source)
    sober = not under the influence of alcohol
  • You've no call to catch cold; and I'd ask you if you'd be so good as tell my husband to come, on your way back—he's at the Rainbow, I doubt—if you found him anyway sober enough to be o' use.   (source)
  • "Now, ladies, I must trouble you to stand aside," said Mr. Kimble, coming from the card-room, in some bitterness at the interruption, but drilled by the long habit of his profession into obedience to unpleasant calls, even when he was hardly sober.   (source)
  • For there was the fever come and took off them as were full-growed, and left the helpless children; and there's the breaking o' limbs; and them as 'ud do right and be sober have to suffer by them as are contrairy—eh, there's trouble i' this world, and there's things as we can niver make out the rights on.   (source)
  • …those fresh bright hours of the morning when temptations go to sleep and leave the ear open to the voice of the good angel, inviting to industry, sobriety, and peace.   (source)
    sobriety = not being under the influence of alcohol
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sober up as in:  I need to sober up.

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  • Talk to me after you sober up.
    sober up = become less drunk
  • But secretly I'm wondering if Haymitch sobered up long enough to help Peeta and me because he thought we just might have the wits to survive.   (source)
    sobered up = stopped being drunk
  • In the daytime, he kept sober, but in the evenings, as the prospect of sleep and nightmares loomed, he was overcome by the need.   (source)
    sober = not drunk
  • After we sobered up a bit with coffee and Mini Thins, Patrick drove me home.   (source)
    sobered up = became less drunk
  • It was the general opinion of Maycomb, however, that Mrs. Merriweather had sobered him up and made a reasonably useful citizen of him.   (source)
    sobered = became less drunk (or got completely past drunkenness)
  • He sobered up a little when we began to clip off the small yellow weeds choking the roses.   (source)
    sobered up = became less drunk
  • I feel like I'm sobering up after drinking all night.   (source)
    sobering up = becoming less drunk (or getting completely past drunkenness)
  • There were third-cousins who had not seen her in years but gave up half a day's pay at the mill to be there; an old drunk who sobered up for her out of respect and sat pale and quietly shaking in the back pew; an ancient, hawk-nosed, hard-eyed man who had not seen her since he was young, but remembered she had once poured him a glass of buttermilk, or was it coffee?   (source)
    sobered up = stopped drinking long enough that he wasn't drunk
  • I needed to sober up a little, so I walked.   (source)
    sober up = become less drunk
  • But you sure didn't get drunk at Fort Carthage and then walk all this way without sobering up.   (source)
    sobering up = becoming less drunk
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show 82 more with this conextual meaning
  • "That she'd take a kid out to sea and let it drown--you wouldn't think a woman could do a thing like that?"
    I said to him: "Are you sure she did do it?"
    He said and in saying it he seemed suddenly to sober up: "I'm quite sure."   (source)
    sober up = become less drunk
  • I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.   (source)
    sober = make less drunk
  • I just told her plainly that currant wine wasn't meant to be drunk three tumblerfuls at a time and that if a child I had to do with was so greedy I'd sober her up with a right good spanking.   (source)
  • He sobered up afterward... .   (source)
    sobered up = became less drunk (or got completely past drunkenness)
  • Sober up.†   (source)
  • The Admiral stiffens up—sobers up—almost instantly.†   (source)
  • The heirs of Uncle Sam Westing clinked glasses with the members of the Good Salvation Soup Kitchen, sobered up for this happy occasion.†   (source)
  • The more anxious I grew about how I was going to sober up, the more upbeat and carefree Will became.†   (source)
  • I need more beers before I sober up.†   (source)
  • He laughed again, then sobered up.†   (source)
  • Last week when I drove him home down his access lane between the rows of maple and elder, he sobered up as he just stared at the roof skeleton rising high above the poured-concrete floor and the metal sidings.†   (source)
  • But I always went home when my dad sobered up.†   (source)
  • Why don't you step home, sober up, and think about this?†   (source)
  • We're sobering up.†   (source)
  • The Chairman seemed grateful for this, and when it was all over, he sat and talked with me a long while, drinking glasses of water to sober up.†   (source)
  • I kept hushing them, and they finally sobered up when I reminded them we were not libre yet.†   (source)
  • Daddy, sobered up some (or perhaps only with the stupid cunning of any hardpressed animal), told the doctor she had fallen downstairs.†   (source)
  • He stared ahead, covered in blood, eyes burning with hate as she cleaned his face and put him on her couch to sober up with some ice packs.†   (source)
  • If I straightened myself out and sobered up, there's a possibility that I could adopt.†   (source)
  • I'd sobered up by then, so I nodded and struggled to keep the frown off my face.†   (source)
  • The surgeon on call had arrived at the hospital late, and drunk, and allowed himself too much time breathing pure oxygen to sober up before starting the simple procedure of removing an inflamed appendix.†   (source)
  • i have to sober up first.†   (source)
  • When he sobered up, he tried to chase her down and get them back, but she outsmarted him.†   (source)
  • And then he'd sober up and dress neatly again and try to tend to his job.†   (source)
  • O'Dell said, sobering up.†   (source)
  • "Well"—again that bleak smile—"I haven't really sobered up yet.†   (source)
  • If he sobers up, Harris thinks Stone could work there.†   (source)
  • She sobered up.†   (source)
  • —sobered up immediately when they saw the condition Pea Eye was in.†   (source)
  • Look, if he sobers up, try to keep him that way, okay?†   (source)
  • How he sobered up by Sunday morning was a complete mystery.†   (source)
  • You might want to sober up before Mom "Your mother."†   (source)
  • When he sobered up, Ozzie drove him home and along the way told him to get rid of the Memphis lawyers.†   (source)
  • "I'll talk to you tomorrow at the Council meeting, if you've sobered up," he said.†   (source)
  • During all the months of soberness the two of them were equals, very close and full of humour, but in his moments of darkness she drew on every play she had been in or had read and used it as a weapon, knowing that when my father sobered up this essentially shy man would be appalled to hear how my mother had over-reacted.†   (source)
  • Have to sober up some before I can open any more.†   (source)
  • The next morning, after Maynard had sobered up, she gave him a choice: leave or go to jail.†   (source)
  • After several minutes of berserk laughter, the large beer-belly warden sobered up and explained.†   (source)
  • He left the culprits confined in the brig of the aircraft carrier while they sobered up and while he thought about it; then he had them lined up before him on the quarter deck.†   (source)
  • And when he and Tom started back to the rodeo grounds Red sobered up the minute they were alone.†   (source)
  • With the help of coffee she sobered up finally and slept through the late afternoon and early evening.†   (source)
  • Meanwhile those of the guests who had sobered up were again drinking to keep company with Nadia, whom they soon made tipsy.†   (source)
  • He has suddenly sobered up, too-dully.†   (source)
  • But it was dead and it smelled wonderful and I ate a lot of it and sobered up.†   (source)
  • We step out into the freezing air and it helps sober me up a little.   (source)
    sober = become less drunk (or get completely past drunkenness)
  • The drunken men were shuffled into the center of the lineup, their shoulders pinched between the shoulders of sober men, so that they wouldn't pitch face forward into the guards.   (source)
    sober = not drunk
  • Winters has sobered me up.   (source)
    sobered = became less drunk (or got completely past drunkenness)
  • Let you sober up in the stocks," says Peeta.†   (source)
  • Now go home, sober up, and get to work on Dying Earth X. I smiled and shook my head.†   (source)
  • Peter took me into the kitchen to make coffee, so I could sober up to drive home.†   (source)
  • When Doc sobers up, we'll get him to take a look at your face.†   (source)
  • Without thinking too much about it, he sobered up and fled London with his tail between his legs.†   (source)
  • I didn't want to be drunk when I did, so I took some Sober Up before I went in.†   (source)
  • "Well," he said, with a grin, "I'll read it just as soon as I sober up.†   (source)
  • It's none of my business, but if I were you I'd sober up for a couple of days.†   (source)
  • He was thrown in the drunk tank and informed he could not use a telephone until he sobered up.†   (source)
  • He was sobering up with this kind of talk.†   (source)
  • He said a few more things, and by then he had sobered up completely.†   (source)
  • JAMIE Sobers up momentarily and with a pitying look.†   (source)
  • Or maybe three or four years from now, or three or four days from now, the prevailing winds take the balloon back home, because it needs money, or it sobered up, or it misses its kid brother.†   (source)
  • As for my dad: even after he'd sobered up he'd retained the faint clumsiness of a punch-drunk boxer, butterfingered with a phone or a kitchen timer, wet brain people called it, the mental damage from hard-core drinking, neurological stuff that never went away.†   (source)
  • Maybe it was just I'd sobered up a bit, no longer the chronic waste and splendor of those blazing adolescent drunks, our own little warrior tribe of two rampaging in the desert; maybe this was just how it was when you got older, although it was impossible to imagine Boris (in Warsaw, Karmeywallag, New Guinea, wherever) living a sedate prelude-to-adulthood life such as the one I'd fallen into.†   (source)
  • I've got some Sober Up in my bag.†   (source)
  • He came back the following night, all sobered up, and offered to buy Salander a beer, which, after a brief hesitation, she accepted.†   (source)
  • Sam insisted that every one of the juveniles go off to detention for at least a year, a demand I considered unreasonable since my client was a good student, had no record whatsoever, admitted what she'd done after she sobered up, and her parents were more than willing to reimburse the church for her share of the damages.†   (source)
  • Tell Lucien to be a nicer person, to stop smoking, cussing, insulting people, telling dirty jokes, to sober up?†   (source)
  • Even with a dose of Sober Up, she couldn't have been clean enough to have taken out Pandora if she'd been drinking her way downtown.†   (source)
  • A lawyer was visiting a client in jail and heard about the two drunk Ole Miss law students in a cell back there, sobering up and missing classes.†   (source)
  • He's still sobering up.†   (source)
  • It took him a week after he sobered up to argue himself out of jail by paying a fine and promising to get out of town.†   (source)
  • He had drunk incessantly and complained that he had not slept for three months and that as soon as he sobered up for however short a time he suffered torments unimaginable to any normal human being.†   (source)
  • For a second Jamie reacts pugnaciously and half rises from his chair to do battle, but suddenly he seems to sober up to a shocked realization of what he has said and he sinks back limply.†   (source)
  • Instead of sobering up, he started to get delirium tremens.†   (source)
  • You'll be here all night if you don't sober up.†   (source)
  • It was composed in a wanton moment by the Dean of the Divinity School on a moonlight night in July, 1776, while sobering up in a Turkish bath.†   (source)
  • He was genuinely hospitable, and the gambler down on his luck, the soldier sobering up, were always welcome at his table.†   (source)
  • He went back to Morocco, where he had been happy, and gradually drifted down the coast, from place to place, until one day when he had sobered up his drinking goes in pretty regular bouts now—he conceived the idea of escaping to the savages.†   (source)
  • I wish I could get at a drink and sober up," he agonized.†   (source)
  • And so first off, Castorp, we're going to stick you in bed; we'll see if we can't get you sobered up with a few weeks of bed rest.†   (source)
  • Found him half sobered up.†   (source)
  • Leave town till Cal sobers up.†   (source)
  • "A little learning is a dangerous thing. Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring; There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again."   (source)
    sobers = makes less impaired (weakened)
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sobering as in:  a sobering thought

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  • These are sobering statistics that should leave all of us concerned.
    sobering = making one serious about an issue
  • ...and then she was laughing with Hannah. But instantly she sobered again.   (source)
    sobered = became serious
  • He'd read me a passage of scripture from the Book of Mormon, about a sober child, quick to observe.   (source)
    sober = serious-minded
  • His expression is sober.   (source)
    sober = serious
  • He had a sober look in his eyes.   (source)
    sober = serious-minded
  • With the bomb bay yawning open and dragging against the air, the plane was burning much more fuel than usual. Given that this mission was stretching the plane's range to the limit, it was sobering news.   (source)
    sobering = serious (making one serious-minded with concern)
  • Alai nodded soberly.   (source)
    soberly = in a serious manner
  • "Well, I can understand that," I said soberly.   (source)
  • Gavril asked in a slightly more sober tone.   (source)
    sober = serious
  • Mr. Murry looked at her soberly.   (source)
    soberly = in a serious manner
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show 88 more with this conextual meaning
  • He sat on the side of Jem's bed, looked at us soberly, then he grinned.   (source)
  • This opulent sobriety betrayed the divided nature of the school, just as in a different way the two rivers that it straddled did.   (source)
    sobriety = seriousness
  • As the rain began to fall more soberly and in smaller liquid drops, children sought for shelter, and all were happy, refreshed and thankful.   (source)
    soberly = seriously
  • In a sober voice my father said, "Some day you may have to live in town."   (source)
    sober = serious
  • "Save them and they'll kill you," he said soberly.   (source)
    soberly = seriously
  • Her associates said little but looked sober and occasionally made important-looking notations on the yellow legal pads that lawyers never seemed to tire of.   (source)
    sober = serious
  • When he turned round to me, his face was sober.   (source)
  • For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed forever from the sobering influence of external danger.   (source)
    sobering = making one serious
  • Philip Lombard's face changed—sobered.   (source)
    sobered = became serious
  • Under the rocky wall to the right there was no path, so on they trudged among the stones on the left side of the river, and the emptiness and desolation soon sobered even Thorin again.   (source)
    sobered = made serious (not lighthearted)
  • The intoxication of success had evaporated; he was soberly his old self; and by contrast with the temporary balloon of these last weeks, the old self seemed unprecedentedly heavier than the surrounding atmosphere.   (source)
    soberly = in a serious manner
  • Napoleon Letsitsi, was a young man of sober habits and good conduct,   (source)
    sober = serious (not reckless or thoughtless)
  • "Well, now," Mr. Summers said soberly, "guess we better get started, get this over with, so's we can go back to work."   (source)
    soberly = seriously
  • The spring was abroad in the land and Marilla's sober, middle-aged step was lighter and swifter because of its deep, primal gladness.   (source)
    sober = serious-minded
  • You and I, Mina dear, who are engaged and are going to settle down soon soberly into old married women, can despise vanity.   (source)
    soberly = in a serious manner
  • Everyone thought soberly for a minute,   (source)
    soberly = seriously
  • Were it not, thinkest thou, for thy little one's temporal and eternal welfare that she be taken out of thy charge, and clad soberly, and disciplined strictly, and instructed in the truths of heaven and earth?   (source)
    soberly = plainly and respectably (without decoration)
  • "Well, he's very sober and industrious," said Nancy, trying to view the matter as cheerfully as possible.   (source)
    sober = serious
  • He was in high spirits, doing everything with happy ease, and preeminent in all the lively turns, quick resources, and playful impudence that could do honour to the game; and the round table was altogether a very comfortable contrast to the steady sobriety and orderly silence of the other.   (source)
    sobriety = seriousness
  • The handsome captain made a similar gesture, presumably offering to accompany her, but Nina shook his hand just as soberly as she had shaken the Count's and then walked across the square in the general direction of historical necessity.†   (source)
  • He looked soberly at the camera.†   (source)
  • "Good-bye, then, Remus," said Dumbledore soberly.†   (source)
  • In measured tones, as soberly as he could, Nels recited the facts as he understood them: Kabuo Miyamoto had gone to Ole Jurgensen to inquire about his land.†   (source)
  • Therefore, we walked soberly around Harvard Square—a part of Cambridge that is not necessarily enhanced by sobriety.†   (source)
  • Miss Peregrine nodded soberly.†   (source)
  • "Oh," said Kate soberly.†   (source)
  • During his second term in office, Comrade E. M. S. went about implementing the Peaceful Transition more soberly.†   (source)
  • On the day of the Great On-Turning two soberly dressed programmers with briefcases arrived and were shown discreetly into the office.†   (source)
  • "I 'N c not been here in a while," he said, his breath coming out white, as he looked round appraisingly at the soberly clad pedestrians on the street.†   (source)
  • Not wanting to appear overanxious or panicky, he found and soberly informed his two new friends that he couldn't find Missy and asked if they would each check with their families.†   (source)
  • "Not back then," Simmon said soberly.†   (source)
  • It looked like the entire school was there, watching soberly as they loaded me in the back of the ambulance.†   (source)
  • She hears Ashoke speaking, saying soberly but loudly enough so that she fears he will wake Alan and Judy upstairs, "Yes, all right, I see.†   (source)
  • He seemed fond of his grandmother and used to her, but her verbosity produced in him a kind of soberly observant speechlessness.†   (source)
  • A woman stands there, thin, sad-faced, not old but aging, soberly dressed in a dark print dress and apron.†   (source)
  • Patrice soberly informed us he didn't think an arrow could pierce an elephant's hide.†   (source)
  • The president nodded soberly, motioning the ambassador to a chair.†   (source)
  • After each show they gather backstage and critique each other's performance soberly.†   (source)
  • "It's working," Dorothea said soberly.†   (source)
  • "All I meant, anyway," she said, soberly, "is that I had to try to fit myself around you and not try to make you fit around me.†   (source)
  • Jace looked at her soberly.†   (source)
  • "I reckon his looks are his own, Mandy," she said soberly.†   (source)
  • Sometimes Wealtheow would tip back her head, letting her copper-red hair fall free, and laugh; sometimes she listened, head cocked, now smiling, now soberly pursing her lips, only offering a nod.†   (source)
  • He was an ambitious and humorless Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who confronted his responsibilities soberly and smiled only when some rival officer at the Santa Ana Army Air Force Base came down with a lingering disease.†   (source)
  • "Shay Bourne is dead," Rufus said soberly.†   (source)
  • Miss Awolowo nodded soberly and paused before replying.†   (source)
  • Medved nodded soberly.†   (source)
  • Amanda watched her soberly, her hands in her lap.†   (source)
  • "Neither mythical nor horse dung, I'm afraid," the Augur says soberly.†   (source)
  • From that agony of bare existence to modern life can be soberly described only as upward progress, and the sole agent for this progress is quite clearly reason itself.†   (source)
  • Instead he'd left me soberly confident.†   (source)
  • I carefully and soberly explained the nature of my talks with the government.†   (source)
  • Shade watched her soberly, then nodded.†   (source)
  • "Mannie," she said soberly, "you're opted.†   (source)
  • "I don't know whether I'll go back to the world or not," she said soberly, but her voice was trembling with a subdued violence, which was pure gaiety.†   (source)
  • A good lawyer can—" The captain nodded soberly.†   (source)
  • My father shook his head soberly.†   (source)
  • They are on their honeymoon and the two of them, very soberly dressed, have walked into a photographic studio.†   (source)
  • More soberly, he turned to Fremantle.†   (source)
  • "We wondered the same thing," Dr. Heinsch replied soberly.†   (source)
  • The president looked at his French counterpart soberly.†   (source)
  • He looked hurt when I said this, deeply hurt, and he said soberly, "That is why you will never be an historian, Mr. McLean.†   (source)
  • When they were seated there was a long silence, as the old watched Mark intently and soberly.†   (source)
  • I found an atmosphere of great courtesy, with students more dignified and more soberly dressed than one finds on most white campuses.†   (source)
  • He laughs-then soberly, with genuine sympathy.†   (source)
  • His father said soberly, "She's a hundred and three years old.†   (source)
  • When her laughter was exhausted she would sigh faintly and ask for the doll, and then soberly set it down on a little minaret table, as if it were a vase of fresh red roses.†   (source)
  • Soberly she went to a hotel, and tidied her hair when she reached the room she had been given.†   (source)
  • Anne and Diana walked home that evening feeling very sober indeed.   (source)
    sober = solemn (serious and thoughtful)
  • "I'll imagine that I like them," said Anne soberly.   (source)
    soberly = in a serious manner
  • Nay, in sober sadness, I believe I now love you all.   (source)
    sober = solemn (serious)
  • ...thank God! my father's a sober man and likely to live;   (source)
    sober = serious
  • There was something so pantherlike in the movement, something so unhuman, that it seemed to sober us all from the shock of his coming.   (source)
    sober = make serious
  • I was a little inclined to take his seriousness lightly, for, after all, four days of rest and freedom from burning, harrowing, anxiety does help to restore one's spirits, but when I saw his face, it sobered me.   (source)
    sobered = made serious
  • Gilbert had whisked the pin out of sight and was studying his history with the soberest face in the world; but when the commotion subsided he looked at Anne and winked with inexpressible drollery.   (source)
    soberest = most serious
  • But the strangest part of the affair is the effect of this vagary, even on a sober-minded man like myself.   (source)
    sober = serious
  • …sitting longer at the whist-table—a choice exasperating to uncle Kimble, who, being always volatile in sober business hours, became intense and bitter over cards and brandy,   (source)
  • These were anxious considerations; enough to sober her spirits even under the prospect of a ball given principally for her gratification.   (source)
    sober = make serious (or more calm)
  • She will grow sober by degrees.   (source)
    sober = serious
  • That was not what she had been used to see in her own father, who was the soberest and best man in that country-side, only a little hot and hasty now and then, if things were not done to the minute.   (source)
    soberest = most serious
  • A weariness, arising probably, in great measure, from the same feelings which he had acknowledged in the morning, was peculiarly to be respected, and they went down their two dances together with such sober tranquillity as might satisfy any looker-on that Sir Thomas had been bringing up no wife for his younger son.   (source)
    sober = calm (not passionate)
  • He certainly wished her to go willingly, but he as certainly wished her to be heartily sick of home before her visit ended; and that a little abstinence from the elegancies and luxuries of Mansfield Park would bring her mind into a sober state, and incline her to a juster estimate of the value of that home of greater permanence, and equal comfort, of which she had the offer.   (source)
    sober = serious
  • So thought Fanny, in good truth and sober sadness, as she sat musing over that too great indulgence and luxury of a fire upstairs: wondering at the past and present; wondering at what was yet to come, and in a nervous agitation which made nothing clear to her but the persuasion of her being never under any circumstances able to love Mr. Crawford, and the felicity of having a fire to sit over and think of it.   (source)
    sober = solemn (serious)
  • Edmund's first object the next morning was to see his father alone, and give him a fair statement of the whole acting scheme, defending his own share in it as far only as he could then, in a soberer moment, feel his motives to deserve, and acknowledging, with perfect ingenuousness, that his concession had been attended with such partial good as to make his judgment in it very doubtful.   (source)
    soberer = more thoughtful (less emotional)
  • Mr. Yates had staid to see the destruction of every theatrical preparation at Mansfield, the removal of everything appertaining to the play: he left the house in all the soberness of its general character; and Sir Thomas hoped, in seeing him out of it, to be rid of the worst object connected with the scheme, and the last that must be inevitably reminding him of its existence.   (source)
    soberness = seriousness
  • He shook his head soberly and raised his right hand.†   (source)
  • "Plenty," I said, soberly thinking over my many faults.†   (source)
  • When Patch didn't laugh, Rixon said soberly, "There's no choice.†   (source)
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  • Now and then, when sober, Jake dreamed again of completing school, making a better life for them all, but the shadow of the foxhole would move across his mind.†   (source)
  • Once I'd conjured up that sobering image, I was able to focus on my situation, and the question at hand: What was she doing here?†   (source)
  • On a more sober note, I am sorry to report that the condition of your young sister-in-law, Miss Laura Chase, has not improved; if anything it has worsened somewhat.†   (source)
  • His head would have been swimming even if he was sober, and Claude had a way of making things confusingly complex.†   (source)
  • Given the prevailing sobriety of her expression, it was unclear what she thought of this music from another era.†   (source)
  • By the time I finished eighth grade, Mom had been sober for at least a year, and she'd been dating Matt for two or three years.†   (source)
  • The walk and the pleasure he derives from tripping Leon seem to sober him up.†   (source)
  • He drank especially heavily when he needed drunk Kenneth to engage in conversations that sober Kenneth wouldn't dare.†   (source)
  • And the Abnegation don't drink alcohol, so everyone is sober.†   (source)
  • He was simply taking me in, observing me, in a manner that was sober but not menacing.†   (source)
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  • Newly focused, sober, and intensely committed to succeed, he graduates with honors and returns to his community intent on changing things.†   (source)
  • Laila was grateful that Mariam was in charge, unclouded and sober, able to think this through for both of them.†   (source)
  • He looked sober and tired.†   (source)
  • I mentioned the titles because they were as great when I listened to them sober.†   (source)
  • The thief looked at the child and what he saw was very sobering to him.†   (source)
  • New instructors, elderly townsmen of unreliable sobriety and disposition, are brought in.†   (source)
  • There were about a hundred of them, all in sober black suits, but the suits were all they had in common.†   (source)
  • In the middle of a crazy and drunk life, you have to hang on to the good and sober moments tightly.†   (source)
  • The next day I decided I'd been sober long enough, but I didn't have the patience to look for the key.†   (source)
  • A sobering power had attacked the earth.†   (source)
  • The voices that spoke were cheerless and sober and suggested a barely suppressed urgency.†   (source)
  • The fourth question was preceded by a sober instruction: Imagine the White House wanted the unfiltered opinion of its constituents.†   (source)
  • It was a remark that shouldn't have shocked me—aren't we all afraid to die—but did, because I remembered her illness and death as very sober, almost muffled.†   (source)
  • The sudden, high-pitched noises sounded even louder against the sober, silent funeral procession.†   (source)
  • He stood sober and penitent, his hands in the pockets of his trousers, as he stared right at Diana.†   (source)
  • Therefore, we walked soberly around Harvard Square—a part of Cambridge that is not necessarily enhanced by sobriety.†   (source)
  • In the bank, she'd always seemed circumspect and sober, but here she's alternately intense and extroverted, with a lime-green barrette in her bobbed hair, glasses rimmed in red plastic, and orange ankle socks.†   (source)
  • The Senator comes out, looking curiously more sober, in a fresh shirt, plaid and pressed, exactly the same as the last one.†   (source)
  • When I'm sober, I'm able to control my urges.†   (source)
  • And then the septon sobered and confessed all to my lord father.†   (source)
  • They seemed distant, at a loss, offended by his sobriety.†   (source)
  • His face sobers, grows older in the glow of the red taillights.†   (source)
  • Tires squeal out of the parking lot, another sober student farewell.†   (source)
  • Lotta men have the drinking problem but there's nothing we can do long as they show up sober and do their work.†   (source)
  • No sober person says "yes" that many times per minute.†   (source)
  • There was something sober and curt in that sweetie.†   (source)
  • The sober, steady brutality, the economy of it all.†   (source)
  • He still found it hard to take Attean's sober teasing.†   (source)
  • They too were dressed in dark clothes and wore sober expressions.†   (source)
  • Every once in a while —when Richie managed to take a bath, put on decent clothes, and stay sober all on the same day—Eleanor could sort of see why her mom might have thought he was handsome.†   (source)
  • In fairness, they weren't even completely sober.†   (source)
  • She giggled, then became sober again.†   (source)
  • Sober.†   (source)
  • How many days' sobriety now?†   (source)
  • After numerous chapters brimming with optimism and cheer, the book ends with the sobering reality of Nazi-dominated Europe.†   (source)
  • Then he dried his tears, grew up, got sober and monogamous.†   (source)
  • That sobered her up.†   (source)
  • His face grew sober.†   (source)
  • A dark theater, he remembered, and the movie was Bonnie and Clyde, and Martha wore a tweed skirt, and during the final scene, when he touched her knee, she turned and looked at him in a sad, sober way that made him pull his hand back, but he would always remember the feel of the tweed skirt and the knee beneath it and the sound of the gunfire that killed Bonnie and Clyde, how embarrassing it was, how slow and oppressive.†   (source)
  • I've visited numerous prisons, juvenile detention centers, sober-living homes and rehabilitation centers.†   (source)
  • He paused and grew sober.†   (source)
  • The agency clown when he was sober.†   (source)
  • In that sober field, two patches of orange looked wild—like life in the raw.†   (source)
  • The poet seemed suddenly sobered as he joined the Consul at the edge of the pit.†   (source)
  • Age sneaks up on us all, but it sneaks up on a dog with a swiftness that is both breathtaking and sobering.†   (source)
  • But then again, none of us were particularly sober, either.†   (source)
  • Beside, I hate when people are too sober.†   (source)
  • They came directly home, sobered by the travesty in which they had participated.†   (source)
  • In spite of two cocktails and the bottle of wine they'd shared she feels distressingly sober.†   (source)
  • He was completely incoherent when he was drunk, but when sober he was one of the chief philosophers of the Corner.†   (source)
  • You could, I suppose, try being really, really earnest, portraying the characters as very serious and sober, making them noble by virtue of their goodness.†   (source)
  • It was strange to see her in dark blue, and so much more sober, more grave than when I'd known her in Ors.†   (source)
  • Very young, Josh said, sobering, recalling his history.†   (source)
  • As time passed, however, even sober men and women began to think of him in less-than-rational terms.†   (source)
  • Willem fixed his sober, deep-set eyes on mine.†   (source)
  • Patrice is just the opposite: studious, sober, and an exact physical copy of his father.†   (source)
  • Braddock walked around the desk, his face sober and dignified, as befitted his position, but when his back was entirely to Ullman, he grinned like a schoolboy.†   (source)
  • His eyes were sober, flat, despite the drink, and not eyes that attracted the eyes of others.†   (source)
  • Now sober, I reported to the hospital and claimed I had broken my fist by punching out my gun before I actually cleared the doorjamb.†   (source)
  • When Winston got drunk and started fighting, the locals knew it was time for the soberest man to ride and get Fannie.†   (source)
  • He was buried in the St. Louis cemetery in New Orleans, and I did everything to avoid passing those gates; but still I thought of him constantly....Drunk or sober, I saw his body rotting in the coin, and I couldn't bear it.†   (source)
  • He plucked the book out of her hand and read out loud: "The world still teems with those motley beings whom a more sober philosophy has discarded.†   (source)
  • I was sober as a judge, I'd just like to point out, although I was in a bit of a state, distracted, panicky almost.†   (source)
  • Their reactions to his words were just what he expected them to be—sober.†   (source)
  • Been sober for eight years.†   (source)
  • Wednesday afternoons we'd have it at Dennis' house because his mother goes shopping at the supermarket and his father doesn't get home from work until after six P.M., even when he's sober.†   (source)
  • The count decorated it according to his personal taste, with a decadent, ambiguous refinement that startled Blanca, accustomed as she was to country life and her father's classical sobriety.†   (source)
  • Swaney's official portrait, a sober three-quarter profile of the mayor in a blazer, hung behind his desk.†   (source)
  • She ordered a sober breakfast from the steward, who was dressed in impeccable white, and in the Captain's personal service, but she did not send a message for anyone to come for her.†   (source)
  • The last arrest occurred three weeks before her eighteenth birthday, when she, perfectly sober, kicked a male passenger in the head inside the gates of the Gamla Stan tunnelbana station.†   (source)
  • I had always thought farmers were sober men.†   (source)
  • I just set out in the right direction, counting the blocks under my breath, and when I walked into the lobby of the hotel I was perfectly sober and my feet only slightly swollen, but that was my own fault because I hadn't bothered to wear any stockings.†   (source)
  • He felt a sense of wonder at the uncharacteristic seriousness in Halleck's manner, the sobering intensity.†   (source)
  • Dad said, trying to straighten himself to appear sober.†   (source)
  • Still —all things considered, Molly knows she has it pretty good: her own room in a tidy house, employed and sober foster parents, a decent high school, a nice boyfriend.†   (source)
  • By 6:00 Pm as the storm escalated into a full-scale blizzard with driving snow and winds gusting in excess of 60 knots, I came upon the rope that had been fixed by the Montenegrins on the snow slope 600 feet above the Col. Sobered by the force of the rising tempest, I realized that I'd gotten down the trickiest ground just in the nick of time.†   (source)
  • They cussed him and put him in the bed but they came back the next day when he was sober.†   (source)
  • The other boys, sobered now, helped me up.†   (source)
  • Dazed, cold sober, she walked across the lawn, fingering her keys.†   (source)
  • Hunched over or not, it was impossible not to be reminded of the sheer impact of his physical presence — the very same that had once reduced two drunken gentlemen to sobriety in the back of a car.†   (source)
  • "Sober enough," he says, trying and failing to raise one eyebrow.†   (source)
  • On the last Saturday in September, Adam celebrated a year of sobriety by returning to Hot Springs for good.†   (source)
  • In a sober voice, he said, "I don't know, Billy.†   (source)
  • But now, on the ground, and in the light, hard and American, of sober second thought, it all seemed rather suspect.†   (source)
  • It sobered me instantaneously, and everything was quiet again.†   (source)
  • Do not come back here until you're completely sober.†   (source)
  • Instead of his usual cocky comeback he kept looking into my eyes, and utterly sober and serious, said, "That's because I was acting like a jerk.†   (source)
  • Yeah, well you don't look too sober yourself.†   (source)
  • Getachew Kassa's slow version of "Tizita," a bright but haunting, sober lament on a backdrop of minor-chord arpeggios, is the best known.†   (source)
  • There's a close-up of a tiny green frog and a sober voice-over talking about the effect of drought on the ecosystem.†   (source)
  • But after the warden asked if he had anything to say, his expression was sober.†   (source)
  • The shock of seeing Patty on my mother's bed, in my mother's room, had sobered me up quick, the way only bad news can.†   (source)
  • Slowly her face sobers into a mask of unhappiness) Ten thousand dollars.†   (source)
  • I sobered quickly.†   (source)
  • Or part of it might have just been sober common sense-maybe this was the only way to avoid crushing failure.†   (source)
  • If you persist in your attachment to your right leg it'll be the last opportunity you have to take a sober look at anything.†   (source)
  • "Sis' Johnnie—Sis' Johnnie!" crowed Deanie; and then she was aware of sober, eleven-year-old Milo climbing down over the wheel and trying to help Lissy, while Pony got in his way and was gravely reproved.†   (source)
  • As he talked he stood straighter and became more sober.†   (source)
  • The walk toward her had been as sobering as usual, each step weakening his resolve to have a good day.†   (source)
  • His entourage stands behind him, sober-faced.†   (source)
  • In the stilted phrasing of a young captain from Pennsylvania, Alexander Graydon, "The appearance of things was not much calculated to excite sanguine expectations in the mind of the sober observer."†   (source)
  • He moved his head as if adjusting his flaking neck to a tight metal collar and put on what looked like, for him, a sober expression, like an old drunk preparing a solemn face for court.†   (source)
  • All the more dimensional, the rarer and sweeter when the narrator allows an element of foolery to attach itself to his sober persona, some hapless-ness or slippery shame.†   (source)
  • But if Tommy was the boy I remembered he was a very sober person and a good student.†   (source)
  • For parents—and parenting experts—who are obsessed with child-rearing technique, this may be sobering news.†   (source)
  • Major Major's father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age.†   (source)
  • He has been cold-sober, working night and day to rebuild his house, this time out of concrete block.†   (source)
  • Part of me wants to say wrong, but we, the gaggle, are straight and sober.†   (source)
  • Look, he's been sober five years now, and if he'd been sober fifty it wouldn't change the way he treated you.†   (source)
  • This is a very sobering assessment of my older sisters' relationships.†   (source)
  • I'm not going to try to suck milk out of a sober pig, sir.†   (source)
  • That's a sobering thought indeed, Mrs. Nightwing.†   (source)
  • The journal's tone contrasted sharply with the sober, earnest accounts that Max had read from later years.†   (source)
  • Before she'd been locked up, Hester/Anne had gotten sober, got married, and quietly embraced Jesus as her personal savior.†   (source)
  • He was cold sober at the moment, and he was promising himself he would not let the booze disrupt the holidays.†   (source)
  • The last drink seemed to have sobered him.†   (source)
  • His voice sobers.†   (source)
  • It sobered him up permanently.†   (source)
  • If I can get him sober for more than ten seconds.†   (source)
  • Oh, yeah, when I'm sober, I believe it a lot.†   (source)
  • Without telling Elinor what I proposed, I trudged out to my father's croft, hoping that the day was young enough to find him sober still.†   (source)
  • His lips curved in his wide, rumpled face, but his eyes remained sober.†   (source)
  • Saturday, February 24, brought a still more sobering headline: MARINES GAIN SLOWLY IN CENTER OF IWO.†   (source)
  • It was no one he knew, probably some drunk out for a sobering stroll after a night at the town's only bar.†   (source)
  • I mean, I'm not going to join you and I'd prefer to hang out with you when you're sober, but I'm not looking to change you.†   (source)
  • I can't sit in a corny place like this cold sober.†   (source)
  • At times like this he would sometimes acknowledge the crowd with nods and an uplifted hand, but tonight he rode with sobriety.†   (source)
  • She sounds like a Centurion, and I try to arrange my face in an appropriately sober manner.†   (source)
  • We left Springville with the sobering realization that a hundred, even fifty years ago, rural blacks and whites sounded more alike than we might have thought.†   (source)
  • Of course, she acted like having a few drinks was no big deal, assuring me she was perfectly sober (although I'm pretty sure she wasn't).†   (source)
  • Most of them were in the uniform tunics of Eddis's soldiers, but she could see older men dressed in sober civilian clothes.†   (source)
  • I had clearly gotten the best of her, so I sobered to an elaborate caricature of humility.†   (source)
  • The threat was sobering even to me.†   (source)
  • It was hardly guessed by anyone that within a few decades there would be no more absolute space, absolute time, absolute substance or even absolute magnitude; that classical physics, the scientific rock of ages, would become "approximate"; that the soberest and most respected of astronomers would be telling mankind that if it looked long enough through a telescope powerful enough, what it would see was the back of its own head!†   (source)
  • I want you to git that stool-pigeoning, joy-killing, nut-crushing bum back in there with you and sober him up.†   (source)
  • The exhausted old sober looked at Marie.†   (source)
  • Mr. Hynning perspired a great deal and there were those among us who thought he was not altogether sober.†   (source)
  • Courtney threw a sober stare at Mark and said, "If we can get things to Bobby, that means we can tell him his family disappeared."†   (source)
  • It ain't pretty, even when you guys are sober.†   (source)
  • They're not drunk yet, but they're not sober either.†   (source)
  • Standing with Marcela, he waited, sober-faced and distracted, as his wife—universally known as "Mrs. Bing"—gamely presented the winner's trophy to Charles.†   (source)
  • "Sovereign," like "love," means anything you want it to mean; it's a word in dictionary between "sober" and "sozzled."†   (source)
  • The price of a liter of rum keeps most of them, with their monthly coupons and meager earnings, stone-cold sober.†   (source)
  • I don't drink anything, so that I can talk politics and keep secrets, and from my position of sobriety I don't think the soup is so good.†   (source)
  • He would make the effort to stay sober when she was there.†   (source)
  • Stinging jets, part words, part pictures, kept shooting at his brain...Hours of it, he thought, hours to spend watching the eyes of the guests getting heavy with boredom if they were sober or glazing into an imbecile stare if they weren't, and pretend that he noticed neither, and strain to think of something to say to them, when he had nothing to say —while he needed hours of inquiry to find a successor for the superintendent of his rolling mills who had resigned suddenly, without explanation-he had to do it at once-men of that sor†   (source)
  • One of the by-products of being a perfectionist and constantly trying to improve myself are sobering feelings of low-grade anxiety and a nagging sense of inadequacy.†   (source)
  • When I didn't join in, she sobered.†   (source)
  • The coldness shocked him sober.†   (source)
  • Poor Simon ....[A figure emerges from the shadows, a young black man dressed in a sober western suit.†   (source)
  • A nearly sober Thorolf came to collect us.†   (source)
  • This night, at least, the sober-physician disguise of her severe clothes and steel-rimmed spectacles could not conceal the sparkling depths of Georgine Delmann's natural ebullience.†   (source)
  • He gets up and he's surprisingly sober, and I realize I haven't seen him touch anything since dinner hours ago.†   (source)
  • He was sober.†   (source)
  • A good rule of thumb when you drink with a subject is that you keep yourself twice as sober as he is.†   (source)
  • He knew, even when sober, that he would need to drink again, and so buried bottles all around the estate.†   (source)
  • After sobering silence) (Sadly) I've got windshield wipers on my eyes, because I married you ....baby!†   (source)
  • For a little while Gideon was sober.†   (source)
  • The show won't be over for two more hours—plenty of time to have a couple beers and appear perfectly sober when the Lincolns need them again.†   (source)
  • In other words, as it says in the Bible: "Don't think of yourself ]or climb] more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you" (Romans 12:3).†   (source)
  • On the way home, although the sky had sobered to a duty-stiff gray, Ralph decided to put the top of his car down.†   (source)
  • He got home stock sober, or seemed sober.†   (source)
  • Gamble was sober sane; Devin was more the barroom type.†   (source)
  • This series of events is more like the incoherent dreams of jealousy or the exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal than like the sober fears of genuine patriotism.†   (source)
  • "Since you're sober," Steve said, "yes."†   (source)
  • Mama must have guessed what was going on in my mind, for she kept handing me sober looks all the time she was getting breakfast.†   (source)
  • But he was sober.†   (source)
  • You want something to sober you down a bit.†   (source)
  • But listen," he said, and he sobered.†   (source)
  • Or had he already drunk so much likker that he couldn't walk straight even when he was sober?†   (source)
  • I was realistic and sober when James Robison asked us to repeat a prayer with him.†   (source)
  • But in my junior year, the cadets of fourth battalion had surprised both me and the Commandant's Department by selecting me as member of the honor court, a tribunal of twenty-one cadets known for their integrity, sobriety, and honesty.†   (source)
  • As the weeks went by the population became noticeably more sober; there were still riotous parties, still drunks sleeping in the gutter, but far fewer than there had been earlier.†   (source)
  • There is a kind of stupidity among drunks, particularly when they are sober, a kind of disconnection which the unobservant interpret as vagueness and which Leamas seemed to acquire with unnatural speed.†   (source)
  • Red was furious each time, accused him of the double cross, but in his sober, good-natured intervals he said things evened out pretty well.†   (source)
  • She was scared but nowhere near sober.†   (source)
  • This was a sobering conclusion.†   (source)
  • She said I want a wife only to keep my house," and he laughed, then sobered.†   (source)
  • Kemp was relieved that the sergeant wasn't quite sober.†   (source)
  • Too frivolous, never sober.†   (source)
  • After the train ride up from Washington, I had experienced hardly a moment's sobriety or a moment's sleep.†   (source)
  • Learning Latin (once I was free of Caesar) fed my love for words upon words, words in continuation and modification, and the beautiful, sober, accretion of a sentence.†   (source)
  • As he looked at those remote ramparts, George felt awed into a sudden sobriety.†   (source)
  • Ben's eyes were round and his face sober.†   (source)
  • Soon even the ebullient Peter was reduced to a sober plod.†   (source)
  • What all agony of these recent times, all sobering realizations, all desperation had not brought about, this was brought on by this moment, when the Om entered his consciousness: he became aware of himself in his misery and in his error.†   (source)
  • She was dry and sober to the point of maliciousness, but her sober-mindedness went hand in hand with an imagination unbridled in everything to do with superstition.†   (source)
  • He begins to sob, and the horrible part of his weeping is that it appears sober, not the maudlin tears of drunkenness.†   (source)
  • He began to wonder whether Ralph was sober enough to be trusted; Ralph heard, and misunderstood the doubt in his voice.†   (source)
  • "I hope you are well!" and he laughed again and then all at once his face sobered completely.†   (source)
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