- sleepy
- sleepy, *drowsy, somnolent, slumberous mean affected by a desire to sleep or inducing such a desire.Sleepy, the ordinary term of this group, applies not only to persons but to things that suggest a resemblance to persons who show a readiness to fall asleep{
away, you rogue, away! I am sleepy—Shak.)
}{a sleepy town
}{the quiet, sleepy railroad station— Anderson
}The term also applies to conditions or to things which incline one to sleep or to dozing or dreaming{the yellowhammer trills his sleepy song in the noonday heat— L. P. Smith
}Drowsy differs from sleepy in carrying a stronger implication of the heaviness or loginess associated with sleepiness than of the actual need of rest{become drowsy after a heavy dinner
}{when the sun should burn through the leaves . . . Mrs. Barkley would grow drowsy . . . and go off to take a nap— Deland
}When applied to things rather than to persons, drowsy connotes more obviously than sleepy a soporific power{not poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep which thou owedst yesterday— Shak.
}{idrowsy tinklings lull the distant folds— Gray
}{the leisurely swishing of the water to leeward was like a drowsy comment on her progress— Conrad
}Somnolent may be used in place of drowsy; usually, however, it connotes the sluggishness or inertness characteristic of one who is sleepy or drowsy or the capacity for inducing this rather than the actual impulse to sleep or doze{a somnolent want of interest— De Quincey
}{Eustacia waited, her somnolent manner covering her inner heat and agitation— Hardy
}{the somnolent pages of a three-volume novel
}Slumberous is often used in the sense of sleepy or drowsy or somnolent; occasionally it carries a distinctive connotation in which it usually suggests quiescence or the repose of latent powers{I . . . heard the mountain's slumberous voice— Shelley
}{Eustacia's manner was as a rule of a slumberous sort, her passions being of the massive rather than the vivacious kind— Hardy
}Analogous words: *lethargic, sluggish, comatose
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.