SOBRIETY • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Sobriety

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/səbrˈaɪəti/ Listen

noun

Sobriety n.

Habitual soberness or temperance as to the use of spirituous liquors; as, a man of sobriety. "Public sobriety is a relative duty."

Habitual freedom from enthusiasm, inordinate passion, or overheated imagination; calmness; coolness; gravity; seriousness; as, the sobriety of riper years. "Mirth makes them not mad, Nor sobriety sad."

Synonyms: Soberness; temperance; abstinence; abstemiousness; moderation; regularity; steadness; calmness; coolness; sober-mindeness; sedateness; staidness; gravity; seriousness; solemnity.

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Etymology of 'Sobriety'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Sobriety" Quotes from Famous Books

... ahead of their time in religious tolerance—witness the Gordon riots in London two years before. Their Parliament wore the crown and spoke the regal language of a patriot Assembly. For five years they themselves had glorified justifiably in the perfect discipline and sobriety with which they had used their irregular power. Their most trusted leaders suggested that they would yet achieve their ends without violence, while the large majority of the Volunteers themselves were still as loyal to the Crown as the Catholics, and were inclined, ...

— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... never intoxicated, but who will tell you that he has drunk whiskey all his life without being harmed by it, is more likely to transmit the evil effects to his children than the man who has occasional drunken outbreaks with intervals of perfect sobriety between. By his frequently repeated small drams he keeps his tissues constantly "alcoholized" to such an extent that they are seldom free from some of the more or less serious consequences. His children are born with organisms which have received a certain ...

— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... natural sobriety disapproved gaining him, too, through that ache of unrealised beauty. For a moment he struggled with it as with a ...

— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... the more we feel how thoroughly it is a characteristic New England town. If I wanted to give a foreigner some clear idea of what that excellent institution a New England town really is, in its history and in its character, in its enterprise and its sobriety, in its godliness and its manliness, I should be sure that I could do it if I could make him perfectly familiar with the past ...

— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various

... Boutwell, of Massachusetts, Secretary of State. The conduct of European affairs requires pure patriotism—that is, conscientiousness of being an American by principle, in the noblest philosophical sense, sound common sense, discretion, simplicity, sobriety of mind, firmness, clear-sightedness. Boutwell would be a Secretary of State ...

— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

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