Sober

Sober - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

SO'BER, a. [L. sobrius.]

1. Temperate in the use of spiritous liquors; habitually temperate; as a sober man. Live a sober, righteous and godly life.

2. Not intoxicated or overpowered by spiritous liquors; not drunken. The sot may at times be sober.

3. Not mad or insane; not wild, visionary or heated with passion; having the regular exercise of cool dispassionate reason. There was not a sober person to be had; all was tempestuous and blustering. Not sober man would put himself in danger, for the applause of escaping without breaking his neck.

4. Regular; calm; not under the influence of passion; as sober judgment; a man in his sober senses.

5. Serious; solemn; grave; as the sober livery of autumn. What parts gay France from sober Spain? See her sober over a sampler, or gay over a jointed baby.

SO'BER, v.t. TO make sober; to cure of intoxication. There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain and drinking largely sobers us again.

Soberness - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

SO'BERNESS, n.

1. Freedom from intoxication; temperance.

2. Gravity; seriousness.

3. Freedom from heat and passion; calmness; coolness. The soberness of Virgil might have shown him the difference.

Sobriety - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

SOBRI'ETY, n. [L. sobrietas, from sobrius.]

1. Habitual soberness or temperance in the use of spirituous liquors; as when we say. a man of sobriety.

2. Freedom from intoxication. Public sobriety is a relative duty.

3. Habitual freedom from enthusiasm, inordinate passion or overheated imagination; calmness; coolness; as the sobriety of riper years; the sobriety of age.

4. Seriousness; gravity without sadness or melancholy. Mirth makes them not mad, nor sobriety sad.

In a few passages, the Greek verb nepho and its derivative adjective nephalios are used in the same sense. The word originally had a physical meaning, as opposed to drunkenness, and is thus used in 1Th 5:6,8, as the foundation of the deeper meaning. Used metaphorically also in the Pastoral Epistles and 1 Peter, as sometimes in the classics, for "cool," "unimpassioned." Ellicott, on 1Ti 3:2,11, distinguishes between the two words by regarding sophron "as pointing to the outward exhibition of the inward virtue" implied in nephalios.

H. E. Jacobs