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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Editorial titled “Sober warnings about e-voting systems”
http://news.com.com/Sober+warnings+abou … 06187.html
I noticed this because I would have used “somber warning”.
“somber warning” in Google has about 728 hits including:
The Oklahoma City bombing: a somber warning to the working class
Lack of vaccine funding prompts somber warning for global health
Reverse Mortgages—A Somber Warning
“sober warning” has about 15,900 hits:
Sober Warning about False Teachers
Richard White’s departure a sober warning for UW.
From what I’ve seen, “sober warning” is only used when “somber
analysis” is equivalent. Then again, you rarely warn of happy things.
In the Gutenberg Project there’s one match for “sober warning”
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/tfsar10.txt
I was almost sure now that he was a plant. During the rest of the luncheon, I tried to draw him out, but Steele was through talking. When we parted, he gave me a sober warning.
and one for “somber warning”
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/vmsgr11.txt
Meekins stood there, fully dressed, his dark, heavy face full of somber warning.
(The phrase “somber black” occurs elsewhere in the text.)
The following page uses both “sober warning” and “somber warning”
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/2 … trs21.html
...Editorial sounded solemn and sober warning
It sounded a solemn and somber warning about our 37th place in the world in terms of quality of health care in spite of the gargantuan sum amounting to half the world’s expenditures spent on health care, not to speak of the well-known more than 20 percent of the world’s oil we in the United States consume, which you also cite.
To see if the word “warning” causes the sombering influence I
looked at ”* analysis”
(conclusion: the good news “is meaningless”; could use somber)My sober analysis on the good news that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead
(actually, this one makes more sense as “sober”, meaning not so much “not drunk” but “not in the heat of the moment”)THANK HEAVENS FOR SOBER ANALYSIS
(hmm, again “sober” is a better word than “somber” here) “somber analysis” -> 512 hits in GoogleAlas, the sopping feminization of political debate continues to drown out sober analysis of gun-control laws.
(somber is better than sober here)... used clear and composed language in her somber analysis of Washington’s dealing with Katrina.
(sober is a better term than somber)... nothing more than a mean-spirited retort to a rather serious and somber analysis of a very catastrophic event that happened recently.
A bigger quote with “somber analysis”; I think “sober analysis” works better
because the implication is there’s been time to cool off and think about
things, and because things have improved.
The author, one of the leading political scientists in Japan, offers a somber analysis and assessment of Japanese politics during two critical recent periods, 1983-1993 and 1994-2004. Japanese Politics examines the incremental and yet steady change which has occurred in Japanese domestic politics and foreign policy. Japan is now replacing its old policies and adopting a more pro-active outlook.
My conclusion is that both “sober” and “somber” have appropriate uses but because the two words are so close people sometimes confuse one for the other.
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