Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A state of drowsiness; sleepiness.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Sleepiness; drowsiness; inclination to sleep; sluggishness.
  • noun In pathology, a state intermediate between sleeping and waking.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Sleepiness; drowsiness; inclination to sleep.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun a state of drowsiness or sleepiness

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a very sleepy state

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Though the movie is endeavoring to rouse the youth of a nation out of some kind of somnolence, it still adheres to a retrograde movie morality out of 30s-era Hollywood.

    GreenCine Daily: PIFF Dispatch. 2. 2007

  • Mr. Ventnor sat in an armchair on the opposite side of the fire; and, finding a kind of somnolence creeping over him, pinched himself.

    Complete Project Gutenberg John Galsworthy Works John Galsworthy 1900

  • Mr. Ventnor sat in an armchair on the opposite side of the fire; and, finding a kind of somnolence creeping over him, pinched himself.

    Five Tales John Galsworthy 1900

  • Though the movie is endeavoring to rouse the youth of a nation out of some kind of somnolence, it still adheres to a retrograde movie morality out of 30s-era Hollywood.

    GreenCine Daily 2009

  • Karen occasionally talked in her sleep, muttering and mumbling, no words that he could decipher, the language of somnolence.

    Furlough 2009

  • Karen occasionally talked in her sleep, muttering and mumbling, no words that he could decipher, the language of somnolence.

    Furlough 2009

  • Thus, they could not understand his excessive somnolence in the forenoon, nor his excessive activity at night.

    When the World Was Young 2010

  • But what happens in the body to cause this post-feast dip—known as postprandial somnolence in the medical community—isn't clear.

    Week in Words 2011

  • She underwent what was fashionably known in those days as a cure de sommeil, a treatment that involved being pumped so full of tranquilizers she was “in a constant state of somnolence.”

    A Covert Affair Jennet Conant 2011

  • She underwent what was fashionably known in those days as a cure de sommeil, a treatment that involved being pumped so full of tranquilizers she was “in a constant state of somnolence.”

    A Covert Affair Jennet Conant 2011

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