Sleeper

How to spell sleeper

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sleeper

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sleeper mean?

1. nounA person who is asleep, or who sleeps in a particular way.
2. nounA wooden or concrete beam laid across a railway track bed to support the rails.
3. nounA railway carriage fitted with berths for overnight passengers.
4. nounA spy or operative who remains inactive for a long period before being called into action.
5. nounSomething that achieves unexpected success after attracting little early attention.

Sleeper in a sentence

• He was always a heavy sleeper and never heard the alarm.

• The crew replaced a cracked sleeper beneath the rusting rails.

• They booked a berth in the overnight sleeper to Edinburgh.

• The agency feared a sleeper had been living quietly in the city for years.

• The low-budget film became a sleeper and earned far more than anyone predicted.

• As a light sleeper she woke at every creak in the old house.

Where does sleeper come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built from the everyday verb 'sleep', which traces back to the Old English slǣpan, meaning 'to rest in unconsciousness', and beyond that to a shared Germanic root that also gave Dutch slapen and German schlafen. Adding the agent suffix '-er' produced a noun for one who sleeps, a sense recorded for centuries. From there the meaning branched in practical directions: by the nineteenth century railway engineers used 'sleeper' for the heavy wooden beam laid across a track bed, since it lies quietly beneath the rails much as a sleeper lies still. The same imagery of lying dormant gave the twentieth-century senses of a spy who waits inactive for years and a film or product that quietly succeeds after a slow start. The spelling is regular and rarely causes trouble, the only point to watch being the double 'e' carried straight over from 'sleep'.

How the word is built

• sleep (verb root, from Old English slǣpan)
• -er (agent/instrument suffix)