Sleepless

How to spell sleepless

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sleepless

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sleepless mean?

1. adjectiveMarked by an inability to sleep, or passed without sleep.

Sleepless in a sentence

• The newborn left both parents exhausted after a sleepless week.

• Worry about the deadline gave her a sleepless night before the presentation.

Where does sleepless come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a thoroughly native English word, built from the Old English noun 'slaep', meaning the natural state of rest in which consciousness is suspended, and the suffix '-leas' (modern '-less'), which meant 'free from' or 'without'. The suffix itself descends from an Old English word related to 'loose', so a sleepless night is literally a night 'loosed from' or lacking sleep. The base word 'sleep' has Germanic cousins across the family, including the Dutch 'slaap' and the German 'Schlaf', all pointing back to a shared ancestor meaning rest. The combination 'sleepless' has been in continuous use for centuries, and because it simply joins two familiar pieces, its spelling holds no hidden traps beyond remembering the doubled 'e' and the single 's' in the suffix.

How the word is built

• sleep (rest with eyes closed)
• -less (without)