Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Inducing or tending to induce sleep.
- adj. Drowsy.
- n. A drug or other substance that induces sleep; a hypnotic.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Tending to produce sleep.
- n. Anything which causes sleep, as certain medicines.
Wiktionary
- n. Something inducing sleep, especially a drug.
- n. figuratively Something boring or dull.
- adj. Tending to induce sleep.
- adj. figuratively boring, dull
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Causing sleep; tending to cause sleep; soporiferous.
- n. A medicine, drug, plant, or other agent that has the quality of inducing sleep; a narcotic.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. inducing mental lethargy
- n. a drug that induces sleep
- adj. sleep inducing
Etymologies
- From French soporifique, from Latin sopor ("deep sleep"), from Proto-Indo-European *swepōr, from Proto-Indo-European *swep-. Unrelated to stupor (distinct in Proto-Indo-European). (Wiktionary)
Examples
“There is a misunderstanding about the meaning of the word soporific and when Thompson explains it to McDonald they both enjoy a laugh, at themselves mostly, they let go a little, and it is one of the most human and intimate moments in the film up until that point.”
“Could anyone ever consider terrific a delivery best called soporific?”
“It may be remembered that Archibald, in what we may term his soporific period, had manifested a strong, although entirely irrational, repugnance to this east chamber.”
“The first half could best be described as soporific, the encounter displaying all the characteristics of a scrap that had the spectre of relegation very much at the banquet.”
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph
“soporific" -- and in explaining Santayana's eventual road to prestige”
“It was part of the reason that my vocabulary at age three included the word 'soporific'.”
“The best I can say about the first half of the performance is that I don't often get to use the word "soporific" in casual conversation.”
“While he quarreled with descriptions of his speaking style as "soporific," Kerry tacitly acknowledged that he failed to connect with enough voters on a personal level.”
“How about it Rudy - buy me a pastrami sandwich for every time I call a Romney speech "soporific"?”
“I will, however, agree that the June/July issue is somewhat "soporific" as Cheney and DeNiro called it.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘soporific’.
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allover
reintegrate, spight, surveillant, harmonize, Colophon, workplace, bigoted, unsighted, bridgework, salutation, voltmeter, octane and 159 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abject, abjure, abscission, abscond, abstemious, abstinence, abysmal, accretion and 787 more...
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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From reading
Collected from reading
venerate, reprobate, reticent, adoration, ethereal, ephemeral, equivocal, contumacious, heinous, solicitous, agnostic, aberration and 335 more...
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phrontistery-s
from phrontistery.info
sabaton, sabbatarian, sabbulonarium, sabelline, sabin, sable, sabliere, sabot, sabretache, sabulous, saburration, saccade and 1593 more...
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Used
halcyon, ineluctable, inspissated, incarnadine, askance, demur, saltation, requisite, effusive, specious, liminality, indomitable and 114 more...
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Words describing singing voices
mellifluous, gravelly, rusty bathtub, velvet fog, howling, laconic, fluttering, quavery, hypnotic, stilted, lilting, sonorous and 47 more...
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Pesky
Pesky pronunciations
perspicacious, carminative, eleemosynary, katzenjammer, cognomen, xanthin, weltanschauung, wahrheitssensible..., entropic doom, dietrologia, lontanaza, überrNoch and 22 more...
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passive
words of inaction
tepid, languid, stagnant, inertia, effete, mired, soporific, reticent, taciturn, mollify, nebbish, milquetoast and 13 more...
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Lexicomaniac
cicatrix, ingeminate, durcheinander, crêpe, soporific, papaverous, archaic, enucleate, falchion, gravitic, pseudorandom, thorp and 10 more...
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My GRE Vocab
moniker, sobriquet, prerogative, aberration, aberrant, nuance, notorious, infamous, renown, allude, refer, content and 109 more...
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word tank
a couple words
logolepsy, nefarious, quintessential, tintinnabulation, serendipity, rhapsody, palimpsest, panoply, mellifluous, imbue, loquacious, garrulous and 174 more...
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List Erine
cool mint antiseptic
shalom, cattywampus, bourgeoisie, aerophile, traverse, grotto, epicurean, ex cathedra, nautilus, epitaph, lathe, continuum and 753 more...
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Novel Words
Concise words to sprinkle in my prose.
apropos, perception, discombobulated, adumbrate, apogee, antinomy, sanguine, glyph, taciturn, aesthetic, truncate, coffee and 143 more...
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My Revised GRE Preparation List
Words from the new GRE : This list consists mostly of words from the book Magoosh-GRE-vocab-ebook, which is one of the best vocab materials available, especially if you have started preparing one ...
alacrity, prosaic, veracity, paucity, contrite, trite, maintain, laconic, pugnacious, disparate, egregious, innocuous and 533 more...
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GRE
trope, surreptitious, tenet, insular, munificent, exegesis, limpid, acerbic, litany, cupidity, restive, protract and 260 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for soporific.
kingparton The first pages, of most of these old papers, are as soporific as a bed of poppies.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Tales and Sketches Nov 23, 2011
bilby Beddy bye-byes, bun-bun. Mar 30, 2009
seanahan Wait, eating lettuce makes you sleepy? Mar 30, 2009
paulbullen Soporific means causing sleepiness. Something is soporific if it causes sleepiness. If the effect of something is sleepiness, that thing is soporific. It is not the effect of that thing that is soporific, it is the thing itself, which is a cause.
Lettuce is soporific: the effect of eating lettuce is sleepiness. It is the cause of sleepiness--the lettuce--that is soporific, not the effect of that cause. It is possible that sleepiness is soporific (in that it tends to cause more sleepiness), but Beatrix Potter wanted to communicate the idea that lettuce itself causes sleepiness, not that sleepiness causes sleepiness.
She apparently had a desire to introduce the word "soporific", but she did so inaptly. Instead of saying, "It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is soporific," she should have said, "It is said lettuce is soporific, that eating too much lettuce makes you sleepy."
Mar 16, 2009
frindley Beatrix Potter's use of soporific is also invoked in Margaret Edson's excellent play W;t. (Also a film, the clever typography is meant to come out as Wit.) Mar 31, 2008
frindley I always bring out the Beatrix Potter quote as evidence that it is possible to nurture wordie-ness even in the very young. This is one of the very earliest books I remember reading. And even then I "got" what she was trying to do to my vocabulary, and I've been using the word ever since. Mar 31, 2008
jeffazi 1. a. causing or tending to cause sleep. b. tending to dull awareness or alertness.
2. of, relating to, or marked by sleepiness or lethargy
Dec 11, 2007
nkocharh "It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is 'soporific.'
"I have never felt sleepy after eating lettuces; but then I am not a rabbit.
"They certainly had a very soporific effect upon the Flopsy Bunnies!"
-Beatrix Potter, The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies. Dec 11, 2006