asleep
- 1Sleeping, or in a looser sense lying quietly at rest.
Half the audience was asleep by the third act.
The dog lay asleep in the one patch of sun on the floor.
Similarsleeping
Oppositeawake
Note
Middle English aslepe built the word from a- "in, on" plus sleep, so a sleeper was first described as being "in sleep." That prepositional origin explains its grammar. It follows a verb (was asleep, lay asleep) or trails a noun (a man asleep), but it does not stand before one: say a sleeping child, not an asleep child. Nor is it graded; you are asleep or you are not.
- 2Of a body part, numb or prickling and partly unresponsive.
Like a phone line with static: the signal from your arm is there, but it comes through as pins and needles.
He woke with his arm asleep and could not feel his fingers.
After an hour in the cramped seat both my legs were asleep.
Note
Limbs are the subject here: an arm, a leg, a foot. The usual verb is fall (my foot fell asleep), and everyday talk calls the feeling pins and needles. The metaphor rests on unresponsiveness, because like a sleeper, the body part stops answering for a while. It is said of the part itself, never of the whole person, so my leg is asleep is about numbness, not rest.
- 3Dead: a euphemism.
Grandmother is asleep, the nurse said, and no one needed her to say more.
Many older gravestones record that the person fell asleep rather than died.
Oppositealive
Note
Calling death sleep softens it, so the dead are spoken of as resting rather than gone. The tone is consoling, and it suits gentle or solemn settings. Because it looks exactly like the ordinary sleeping sense, only context carries the meaning. With children, or with anyone likely to take it literally, a plainer word is often kinder.
- 4Inattentive; not alert to what is going on.
The defense was asleep for the whole first half.
Regulators were asleep while the bank piled up risk.
Similarinattentive, oblivious, unaware
Oppositealert, attentive, vigilant
Note
Slang turns sleep into a reproach: someone who missed what was in front of them was asleep, and Were you asleep? says so bluntly. George Carlin, in Brain Droppings (1997), turned it on belief itself: you have to be asleep to believe in the American Dream. It follows a verb (was asleep), never a noun, and belongs to casual speech; in formal writing, inattentive or unaware is safer.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English aslepe, formed from the prefix a- (meaning "in" or "on") combined with sleep.