stone cold sober
3
5.6
- idiom
- Informal
:
completamente sobrio
- I am stone-cold sober, thank you very much!
- appears stone cold sober
And but I know a lot of people that do that sober, stone cold sober.
- And but I know a lot of people that do that sober, stone cold sober.
- 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.
- 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
-
Stage fright was new to him, but so was playing stone-cold sober.
Fiction book (1997) -
You were stone cold sober, lucid and clear thinking when you wrote that to your daughter.
-
Yeah, the man saved my life and got me stone-cold sober.
-
So, last Friday, I was playing Xbox after work, stone cold sober, and I decided to watch a movie.
Blog text (2) -
He appears stone cold sober.
Fiction book (1996) -
Jesus, I'm stone-cold sober now.
-
There are people who are safer drivers with a .10 BAC than others who are stone cold sober.
Blog text (4) -
He was stone-cold sober when the earth opened outside his door.
Fiction book (1994) -
While UW is perennially tagged as one of the nation's biggest party schools, the Princeton Review has named BYU the most "stone cold sober" college for 14 years running.
Blog text (10) -
I am stone cold sober, thank you very much!
Synonyms
269
3.2
Not having drunk alcohol or taken drugs
4
6.2
Completely free of alcohol or drugs
1
6.9
Shows no signs of being drunk
A person who is not affected by alcohol
Not drunk or affected by alcohol
Antonyms
How Sober
Surface Forms
Morphology
The head 'sober' gives the core meaning (not intoxicated) while 'stone cold' functions as an emphatic, metaphorical intensifier meaning 'completely' rather than literally stone or cold. A B1 learner who knows the constituents can often infer 'very/completely sober', but the intensifier is idiomatic and not fully predictable from the parts, so it is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Stone cold sober may come from the old phrase 'stone-cold', where stone and cold give the image of something hard and very cold, and they make sober feel stronger. That's why it means 'completely sober'.