Definitions

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

  • adjective Inducing sleep; soporific.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Causing or inducing sleep; soporific: as, a somniferous drug.

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

  • adjective Causing or inducing sleep; soporific; dormitive.

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

  • adjective causing or inducing sleep, normally with harmful overtones.

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

  • adjective sleep inducing

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the somnifer; somnus "sleep" + ferre "to bring"

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Examples

  • In the times of St Thomas it [woman] was considered an essence as certainly defined as the somniferous virtue of the poppy ...

    March 25th, 2009 m_francis 2009

  • In a deep leather chair, his feet resting in another deep leather chair, at the Indoor Yacht Club, Harry Del Mar yielded to the somniferous digestion of lunch, which was for him breakfast as well, and glanced through the first of the early editions of the afternoon papers.

    CHAPTER XX 2010

  • ``To construct mechanically the brain of a somniferous tale, it is not enough to dissect nonsense and mightily stupefy the reader's intelligence with renewed doses, so as to paralyse his faculties for the rest of his life by the infallible law of fatigue; one must, besides, with good mesmeric fluid, make it somnambulistically impossible for him to move, against his nature forcing his eyes to cloud over at your own fixed stare.

    What the nonfiction writer promises the reader. Ann Althouse 2008

  • For the former, the revelations and fascination were regularly overcome by the somniferous effect of this essentially meaningless work.

    John Bolton - Surrender is Not an Option 2007

  • The wine, which had exerted its somniferous influence over Mr. Snodgrass and Mr. Winkle, had stolen upon the senses of Mr. Pickwick.

    The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club 2007

  • And botany, about which he produced reams of somniferous poetry titled The Loves of Plants all about the sex life of eighty-three species of vegetation.

    American Connections James Burke 2007

  • And botany, about which he produced reams of somniferous poetry titled The Loves of Plants all about the sex life of eighty-three species of vegetation.

    American Connections James Burke 2007

  • She seemed about to call down vengeance upon me; when, happily the leaden god, in pity to her trembling Lovelace, waved over her half-drowned eyes his somniferous want, and laid asleep the fair exclaimer, before she could go half through with her intended imprecation.

    Clarissa Harlowe 2006

  • The Justice, whose eyes had closed under the influence of the somniferous lullaby of the song, started up in his chair as it suddenly ceased, and stared with wonder at the unexpected addition which the company had received while his organs of sight were in abeyance.

    Rob Roy 2005

  • It would be a great mistake to think that we should banish from our tables all somniferous articles.

    The physiology of taste; or Transcendental gastronomy. Illustrated by anecdotes of distinguished artists and statesmen of both continents by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. Translated from the last Paris edition by Fayette Robinson. 2004

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