[Ads-l] antedating "sober up"

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED barely mentions this essential form, with 1901 as its earliest.

1850 _Citizen and Democrat_ (Carbondale, Pa.) (Jan. 4) 2 [Newspapers.com]:
The Holidays over, and the members [are] - we will not say "sobered up,"
but charitably - "brightened up."

1850 _Weekly Plain Dealer_ (Cleveland, O.) (Oct. 16) 2 [Ibid.]: Down jumps
Galloway from his dizzy height, and his friends sobering up, invited him to
take a plate of oysters!

1854 _Tri-Weeky Yeoman_ (Frankfort, Ky.) (Aug. 31) [Ibid.]:  The "sobering
up" is a very difficult process.

1855  _Morning Herald_ (Harrisburg, Pa.) (May 25) 2 [Ibid.]: A man applied
yesterday...to be committed to prison for thirty days, with the view, as he
termed it, of getting "sobered up."

1855 _Pittsburgh Post_ (July 16) 3 [Ibid.]: The fall sobered him up pretty
well.

1858 _New Orleans Crescent_ (Jan. 4) 1 [Ibid.]: Hard-looking customers,
sobering up, pennliess and homeless, from their New Year's drunken frolics.

Etc., etc.

JL

-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org