cold sober
4
6.2
- adjective
- Informal
:
completamente sobrio
- He appears stone cold sober.
- stone-cold sober
You were stone cold sober, lucid and clear thinking when you wrote that to your daughter.
- You were stone cold sober, lucid and clear thinking when you wrote that to your daughter.
- What I do it here stone cold sober, I have no idea.
- And but I know a lot of people that do that sober, stone cold sober.
- But I have to say, I think stone cold sober, he got the own prayer as a tramp stamp.
- I've kicked them out of nightclubs because they go and they find the drunk woman and they're stone cold sober.
Examples
-
You were stone cold sober, lucid and clear thinking when you wrote that to your daughter.
-
Hector, however, is cold sober, grim-faced.
Fiction book (1993) -
By day, cold sober, he had no hope.
Fiction book (1997) -
Somehow, I'm suddenly cold sober.
-
I am stone-cold sober, thank you very much!
-
Yeah, the man saved my life and got me stone-cold sober.
-
Jesus, I'm stone-cold sober now.
-
Thinking maybe we just drank too much, we call over one of our buddies who was stone cold sober.
Blog text (22) -
He expected to find the former clown drunk and asleep, but Hoxton, overwhelmed by the serious view of life that suddenly had been imposed on him, was wide awake and cold sober.
Fiction book (2001) -
After the party, I was cold sober when I made the decision to drive home safely.
Synonyms
269
3.2
Not having drunk alcohol or taken drugs
3
5.6
Not affected by alcohol or drugs at all
1
6.9
Shows no signs of being drunk
Not affected by alcohol or drugs
A person who is not affected by alcohol
Not drunk or affected by alcohol
Antonyms
How Sober
Surface Forms
Morphology
The adjective 'sober' gives the general meaning (not intoxicated), but the contribution of 'cold' is idiomatic — it functions as an intensifier meaning 'completely' (as in 'stone cold sober'). This intensifying/metaphorical use of 'cold' is not a straightforward compositional meaning a B1 learner would reliably predict from the basic sense of 'cold', so partial inference is possible but full meaning usually requires prior exposure.
Etymology
The phrase cold sober may come from using cold to mean 'completely'. Picture someone standing in the cold, clear and not feeling the effects of drink, and you can see why cold sober means 'completely sober'.