sedate1
/sɪˈdeɪt
/adjective
1Calm, dignified, and unhurried: in the old days, business was carried on at a rather more sedate pace...
- Tullow Street may look calm and sedate most mid week days but come the weekends it is an entirely different place.
- This does not reflect well on the sedate, calm and collected gentleman that I hallucinated myself to be.
- The old rock-and-lava ball had built up a nice ozone shield under which life could evolve at a properly sedate pace.
Synonyms
calm, tranquil, placid, composed, serene, steady, unruffled, imperturbable, unflappable;
dignified, serious, serious-minded, formal, decorous, proper, prim, demure, sober, earnest, staid, stiff, stuffy, boring
informal starchy, stick-in-the-mud
slow, unhurried, relaxed, leisurely, unrushed, slow-moving, slow-going, slow and steady, easy, easy-going, gentle, comfortable, restful, undemanding, lazy, languid, languorous, plodding, dawdling, leisured, measured, steady
informal laid-back
1.1Quiet and rather dull: sedate suburban domesticity...
- But all this makes it rather quieter, and more sedate, and a perfect place for stage two.
- She looked out the front window at the street below them, which appeared deceptively quiet and sedate as a cart rolled by innocently.
- If you haven't figured it yet, this is an elegy to my city's once quiet, sedate, pleasant city roads, a haven for motorists.
Derivatives
sedately
/ adverb ...- I managed to do the dishes before I sedately walked to the bath.
- In Tbilisi, however, they do things somewhat more sedately.
- I took a deep breath, turned on my turn-signal, made an easy right turn, and sedately left the neighborhood.
sedateness
- He has always impressed with the sedateness of his craft; invariably his films are like life in slow motion.
- But earlier this year the sedateness was violently disturbed when a gas tanker was deliberately driven into the walls.
- If they view the sedateness of the native culture with a skeptical eye, they can also be grateful for it.
Origin
Late Middle English (originally as a medical term meaning 'not sore or painful', also 'calm, tranquil'): from Latin sedatus, past participle of sedare 'settle', from sedere 'sit'.
Rhymes
sedate2
/sɪˈdeɪt/verb [with object]
Calm (someone) or make them sleep by administering a sedative drug: she was heavily sedated...
- His lawyers also claimed that he was heavily sedated with antipsychotic drugs during his trial.
- The anesthesia care provider then further sedates the patient intravenously.
- I have no recollection of the actual event, or the following week during which I was heavily sedated.
Synonyms
tranquillize, give a sedative to, put under sedation, calm down, quieten, pacify, soothe, relax, dope, drug, administer drugs/narcotics/opiates to, knock out, anaesthetize;
stupefy
Origin
1960s: back-formation from sedation.