Nepenthe, an imaginary goddess, the allayer of pain and the soother of sorrows, or the impersonation of stern retributive justice.
He got through a vast amount of work, only soother of the nerves he knew.
There is no soother so effectual as the soft voice of the Gospel.
I am the soother, the joy, the life, the happiness inexhaustible!
That sigh dispelled the fear of the wife, and made her alive only to her privilege of the soother.
There was a want of some soother of the excitement produced.
My Bible was my only companion—my soother and support; for I found no threat there but against the wicked.
We are now to observe him reft of every admirer, every soother, every friend.
Time is a soother of sorrows, a healer of rancours, however legitimate.
Pleasure is not the soother of griefs, that ask the nourishment of a morbid appetite for an accession of woe.
Old English soð "truth, justice, righteousness, rectitude; reality, certainty," noun use of soð (adj.) "true, genuine, real; just, righteous," originally *sonð-, from Proto-Germanic *santhaz (cf. Old Norse sannr, Old Saxon soth, Old High German sand "true," Gothic sunja "truth").
The group is related to Old English synn "sin" and Latin sontis "guilty" (truth is related to guilt via "being the one;" see sin (v.)), from PIE *es-ont- "being, existence," thus "real, true," from present participle of root *es-, the s-form of the verb "to be" (see be), preserved in Latin sunt "they are" and German sind. Archaic in English, it is the root of modern words for "true" in Swedish (sann) and Danish (sand). In common use until mid-17c., then obsolete until revived as an archaism early 19c. by Scott, etc. Used for Latin pro- in translating compounds into Old English, e.g. soðtacen "prodigy," soðfylgan "prosequi."
Old English soðian "show to be true," from soð "true" (see sooth). Sense of "quiet, comfort, mollify" is first recorded 1690s, via notion of "to assuage one by asserting that what he says is true" (i.e. to be a yes-man), a sense attested from 1560s (and cf. Old English gesoð "a parasite, flatterer"). Meaning "reduce the intensity" (of a pain, etc.) is from 1711. Related: Soothed; soothing.
