SOBERING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does sobering mean? 

• SOBERING (adjective)
  The adjective SOBERING has 1 sense:

1. tending to make sober or more serious

  Familiarity information: SOBERING used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SOBERING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Tending to make sober or more serious

Context example:

the news had a sobering effect

Similar:

serious (concerned with work or important matters rather than play or trivialities)

 Context examples 

They were of sobering tendency; they allayed agitation; they composed, and consequently must make her happier.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

This was a blessing, bright, vivid, and exhilarating;—not like the ponderous gift of gold: rich and welcome enough in its way, but sobering from its weight.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It was easy to decide that she was still too young; and Jane remained with them, sharing, as another daughter, in all the rational pleasures of an elegant society, and a judicious mixture of home and amusement, with only the drawback of the future, the sobering suggestions of her own good understanding to remind her that all this might soon be over.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Hosts loved to detain the dry lawyer, when the light-hearted and loose-tongued had already their foot on the threshold; they liked to sit a while in his unobtrusive company, practising for solitude, sobering their minds in the man’s rich silence after the expense and strain of gaiety.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)