sleeping

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈsliːpɪŋ/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iːpɪŋ

Verb

sleeping

1. present participle and gerund of sleep
   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 20, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:

     ‘No. I only opened the door a foot and put my head in. The street lamps shine into that room. I could see him. He was all right. Sleeping like a great grampus. Poor, poor chap.’

Adjective

sleeping (not comparable)

1. Asleep.
   • 2013 July 19, Ian Sample, “Irregular bedtimes may affect children's brains”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 6, page 34:

     Irregular bedtimes may disrupt healthy brain development in young children, according to a study of intelligence and sleeping habits.  ¶ Going to bed at a different time each night affected girls more than boys, but both fared worse on mental tasks than children who had a set bedtime, researchers found.

2. Used for sleep; used to produce sleep.

Noun

sleeping (countable and uncountable, plural sleepings)

1. The state of being asleep, or an instance of this.
   • c. 1380, William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman, section I:

     And as I lay and lened and loked in the wateres / I slombred in a slepyng, it swyved so merye.

   • 1995, Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, page 144:

     […] there are no words to describe the way she negotiated the abyss between her dreams, those wakings strange as her sleepings.

Derived terms

Anagrams

• peelings, speeling

Noun

sleeping m (plural sleepings)

1. sleeping car

   Synonym: wagon-lit

Further reading

• “sleeping”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.