sleep

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A natural periodic state of rest for the mind and body, in which the eyes usually close and consciousness is completely or partially lost, so that there is a decrease in bodily movement and responsiveness to external stimuli. During sleep the brain in humans and other mammals undergoes a characteristic cycle of brain-wave activity that includes intervals of dreaming.
2. n. A period of this form of rest.
3. n. A state of inactivity resembling or suggesting sleep; unconsciousness, dormancy, hibernation, or death.
4. n. Botany The folding together of leaflets or petals at night or in the absence of light.
5. n. A crust of dried tears or mucus normally forming around the inner rim of the eye during sleep.
6. v. To be in the state of sleep or to fall asleep.
7. v. To be in a condition resembling sleep.
8. v. To pass or get rid of by sleeping: slept away the day; went home to sleep off the headache.
9. v. To provide sleeping accommodations for: This tent sleeps three comfortably.
10. sleep around Informal To be sexually active with more than one partner.
11. sleep in To sleep at one's place of employment: a butler and a chauffeur who sleep in.
12. sleep in To oversleep: I missed the morning train because I slept in.
13. sleep in To sleep late on purpose: After this week's work, I will sleep in on Saturday.
14. sleep on To think about (something) overnight before deciding.
15. sleep out To sleep at one's own home, not at one's place of employment.
16. sleep out To sleep away from one's home.
17. sleep over To spend the night as a guest in another's home.
18. sleep together To have sexual relations.
19. sleep with To have sexual relations with.
20. idiom. log To sleep very deeply.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To take the repose or rest which is afforded by a suspension of the voluntary exercise of the bodily functions and the natural suspension, complete or partial, of consciousness; slumber. See the noun.
2. To fall asleep; go to sleep; slumber.
3. To lie or remain dormant; remain inactive or unused; be latent; be or appear quiet or quiescent; repose quietly: as, the sword sleeps in the scabbard. Sails are said to sleep when so steadily filled with wind as to be without motion or sound; and a top is said to sleep when it spins so rapidly and smoothly that the motion cannot be observed.
4. To rest, as in the grave; lie buried.
5. To be careless, remiss, inattentive, or unconcerned; live thoughtlessly or carelessly; take things easy.
6. In botany, to assume a state, as regards vegetable functions, analogous to the sleeping of animals. See sleep, n., 5.
7. To be or become numb through stoppage of the circulation: said of parts of the body. See asleep.
8. Synonyms and
9. Drowse, Doze, Slumber, Sleep, nap, rest, repose. The first four words express the stages from full consciousness to full unconsciousness in sleep. Sleep is the standard or general word. Drowse expresses that state of heaviness when one does not quite surrender to sleep. Doze expresses the endeavor to take a sort of waking nap. Slumber has largely lost its earlier sense of the light beginning of sleep, and is now more often an elevated or poetical word for sleep.
10. To take rest in: with a cognate object, and therefore transitive in form only: as, to sleep the sleep that knows no waking.
11. With away: To pass or consume in sleeping: as, to sleep away the hours; to sleep away one's life.
12. With off or out: To get rid of or overcome by sleeping; recover from during sleep: as, to sleep off a headache or a debauch.
13. To afford or provide sleeping-accommodation for: as, a car or cabin that can sleep thirty persons.
14. n. A state of general marked quiescence of voluntary and conscious (as well as many involuntary and unconscious) functions, alternating more or less regularly with periods of activity. In human sleep, when it is deep, the body lies quiet, with the muscles relaxed, the pulse rate lower than during the waking hours, and the respiration less frequent but deep, while the person does not react to slight sensory stimuli. Intestinal peristalsis is diminished; secretion is less actively carried on; the pupils are contracted; and the brain is said to be anemic. If the depth of sleep is measured by the noise necessary to waken the sleeper, it reaches its maximum within the first hour and then diminishes, at first rapidly, then more slowly.
15. n. A period of sleep: as, a short sleep.
16. n. Repose; rest; quiet; dormancy; hence, the rest of the grave; death.
17. n. Specifically, in zoology, the protracted and profound dormancy or torpidity into which various animals fall periodically at certain seasons of the year. Two kinds of this sleep are distinguished as summer and winter sleep, technically known as estivation and hibernation (see these words).
18. n. In botany, nyctitropism, or the sleep-movement of plants, a condition brought about in the foliar or floral organs of certain plants, in which they assume at nightfall, or just before, positions unlike those which they have maintained during the day. These movements in the case of leaves are usually drooping movements, and are therefore suggestive of rest, but the direction of movement is different in different cases. Thus, among the Oxalidaceæ the sleep-movement consists in the downward sinking of the leaflets, which become at the same time folded on themselves. Among the Leguminosæ, the leaflets, in some cases, simply sink vertically downward (Phaseoleæ); in others, they sink down while the main petiole rises (terminal leaflet of Desmodium); in others, they sink downward and twist on their axes so that their upper surfaces are in contact beneath the main petiole (Cassia); in others, again, they rise and bend backward toward the insertion of the petiole (Coronilla); in others, they rise, and the main petiole rises also, whereas in Mimosa pudica the leaflets rise and bend forward, while the main petiole falls. In Marsilea the leaflets rise up, the two upper ones being embraced by the two lower.

Wiktionary

1. n. uncountable The state of reduced consciousness during which a human or animal rests in a daily rhythm.
2. n. countable, informal An act or instance of sleeping.
3. n. uncountable Rheum found in the corner of the eyes after waking, whether real or a figurative objectification of sleep (in the sense of reduced consciousness).
4. v. intransitive To rest in a state of reduced consciousness.
5. v. intransitive (Of a spinning top) to spin on its axis with no other perceptible motion.
6. v. transitive To accommodate in beds.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. imp. of Sleep. Slept.
2. v. To take rest by a suspension of the voluntary exercise of the powers of the body and mind, and an apathy of the organs of sense; to slumber.
3. v. To be careless, inattentive, or uncouncerned; not to be vigilant; to live thoughtlessly.
4. v. To be dead; to lie in the grave.
5. v. To be, or appear to be, in repose; to be quiet; to be unemployed, unused, or unagitated; to rest; to lie dormant.
6. v. To be slumbering in; -- followed by a cognate object.
7. v. rare To give sleep to; to furnish with accomodations for sleeping; to lodge.
8. n. A natural and healthy, but temporary and periodical, suspension of the functions of the organs of sense, as well as of those of the voluntary and rational soul; that state of the animal in which there is a lessened acuteness of sensory perception, a confusion of ideas, and a loss of mental control, followed by a more or less unconscious state.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a period of time spent sleeping
2. n. a natural and periodic state of rest during which consciousness of the world is suspended
3. n. a torpid state resembling deep sleep
4. n. euphemisms for death (based on an analogy between lying in a bed and in a tomb)
5. v. be able to accommodate for sleeping
6. v. be asleep