sober up
verb
Simple meaning
Become sober after excessive alcohol consumption.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
sohberuhpSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈsoʊbɚˈʌp
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
Become sober after excessive alcohol consumption
“Keep him in bed until he sobers up.”
To become sober; to cause to become sober (usually in terms of alcohol or drugs; sometimes figuratively).
Become more realistic
“After thinking about the potential consequences of his plan, he sobered up.”
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: Become sober after excessive alcohol consumption
Used this way, sober up is a common word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.