sleeping

Pluralsleepings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of sleep.

   The cat is sleeping on the warm windowsill.

   Sleeping through the storm, she missed the thunder entirely.

   Note

   The -ing form does two jobs. After be it builds the progressive (she is sleeping), and in noun positions it works as a gerund (sleeping late helps). It carries every sense of sleep with it, so context decides: sleeping with someone is a euphemism for sex, and the bed sense survives in a cabin sleeping four. Margery Allingham's The China Governess (1963) has a man sleeping like a great grampus.

2. 2
   adjective

   In a state of sleep and not awake.

   She tiptoed past the sleeping children to turn off the light.

   A sleeping passenger slumped against the train window.

   Similarslumbering

   Oppositeawake, waking, wakeful

   Note

   The adjective earns its place before a noun: a sleeping child, a sleeping passenger. After a verb English normally switches to asleep. The child is asleep is the adjective, while the child is sleeping reads as the verb in its progressive. It does not take degrees, because nobody is more sleeping than someone else.

3. 3
   adjective

   Used for sleep, or made to produce sleep.

   Each sleeping compartment on the night train held two narrow berths.

   The pharmacist warned that the sleeping tablets could be habit-forming.

   Note

   Here the word classifies rather than describes. A sleeping bag, a sleeping car and a sleeping pill are things for sleep, not things that are asleep. That sets it apart from the "asleep" adjective: a sleeping passenger is asleep, but a sleeping compartment is simply where sleep happens. The pill and the draft show the second strand, things made to bring sleep on.

4. 4
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The state of being asleep, or a period spent asleep.

   His restless sleeping worried the whole household.

   Long stretches of sleeping are common during recovery from illness.

   Similarslumber, rest

   Oppositewakefulness

   Note

   The noun is old. William Langland's Piers Plowman (c. 1380) has the dreamer slumber "in a slepyng", meaning in a spell of sleep. It is usually uncountable, but it can be counted, and the plural sleepings has a literary ring. Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber (1995) pairs "those wakings strange as her sleepings", where the plural gives each night its own separate stretch of sleep.

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