slumber
/ˈslʌm.bɚ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.20 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A very light state of sleep, almost awake.
noun
A very light state of sleep, almost awake.
noun
The snooze button on an alarm clock.
Example Sentences
- "Fast asleep? It is no matter; / Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber."
- "Ev’n Luſt and Envy ſleep, yet Love denies / Reſt to my Soul, and ſlumber to my Eyes."
- "He at last fell into a slumber, and thence into a fast sleep, which detained him in that place until it was almost night."
- "Marcel Duchamp's urinal and readymades seemed in the beginning to be insider jokes or jokelike paradoxes meant to awaken people from their aesthetic slumbers."
- "He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep."
- "If Sleep and Death be truly one, And every spirit’s folded bloom Thro’ all its intervital gloom In some long trance should slumber on; […]"
Etymology
From Middle English slombren, slomren, frequentative of Middle English slummen, slumen (“to doze”), probably from Middle English slume (“slumber”), from Old English slūma, from Proto-Germanic *slūm- (“slack, loose, limp, flabby”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)lew- (“loose, limp, flabby”). Cognate with West Frisian slommerje, slûmerje (“to slumber”), Dutch sluimeren (“to slumber”), German schlummern (“to slumber, doze”), Swedish slummer (“to slumber”). By surface analysis, sloom + -er.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈslʌm.bɚ/
- British English: /ˈslʌm.bə/