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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

sleeper.

Someone who sleeps.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈsliːpə(ɹ)/
  1. Someone who sleeps.

    I'm a light sleeper: I get woken up by the smallest of sounds.
    She's a heavy sleeper: it takes a lot to wake her up.
  2. That which lies dormant, as a law.

  3. A spy, saboteur, or terrorist who lives unobtrusively in a community until activated by a prearranged signal; may be part of a sleeper cell.

  4. A small starter earring, worn to prevent a piercing from closing.

  5. A railway sleeping car.

    We spent a night on an uncomfortable sleeper between Athens and Vienna.
  6. A sleeper hold.

  7. Something that achieves unexpected success after an interval of time.

    A box-office bomb when it first came out, the film was a sleeper, becoming much more popular decades after being released.
  8. Any member of the family Odontobutidae of goby-like bottom-feeding freshwater fish.

  9. A nurse shark (family Ginglymostomatidae).

  10. A type of pajama for a person, especially a child, that covers the whole body, including the feet.

    Aaron, Devin, and Laura looked so comfy in their sleepers.
  11. An automobile which has been internally modified to excess, while retaining a mostly stock appearance in order to fool opponents in a drag race, or to avoid the attention of the police.

    slang
  12. A sedative.

    slang
  13. A bet placed on the gambling table and then forgotten about by the gambler.

    slang
  14. A pod or similar device containing a person in cryosleep.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English sleper, equivalent to sleep + -er.

verb/ˈsliːpə(ɹ)/
  1. To mark a calf by cutting its ear.

    rare
Where this word comes from

From Middle English sleper, equivalent to sleep + -er.

noun/ˈsliːpə(ɹ)/
  1. A railroad tie.

    UK
  2. A structural beam in a floor running perpendicular to both the joists beneath and floorboards above.

  3. A heavy floor timber in a ship's bottom.

  4. The lowest, or bottom, tier of casks.

Where this word comes from

Compare Norwegian sleip (“a sleeper (a timber); as adjective, slippery, smooth”). See slape.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.