Word.ws English Dictionary

dormitive

dormitive adjective: causing sleep.

Adjective

dormitive (comparative more dormitive, superlative most dormitive)

  1. Causing sleep.
    • But "imitation" throws no light upon why they so act; it repeats the fact as an explanation of itself. It is an explanation of the same order as the famous saying that opium puts men to sleep because of its dormitive power.1916, John Dewey, Democracy and Education
    • Quare Opium facit dormire: ... Quia est in eo Virtus dormitiva. (Why Opium produces sleep: ... Because there is in it a dormitive power.)1673, Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), Le Malade Imaginere, Act III, Interlude iii

Noun

dormitive (plural dormitives)

  1. A medicine to promote sleep; a soporific or opiate.

Forms of dormitive

Adjective
comparativemore dormitive
superlativemost dormitive
Noun
pluraldormitives

Origin of dormitive

From French dormitif, from the verb dormir (“to sleep”)

Words formed from dormitive

Phrases with dormitive

Questions about dormitive

What does dormitive mean?
Dormitive means causing sleep.
What part of speech is dormitive?
Dormitive can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near dormitive in the dictionary

  1. dorming
  2. Dormington
  3. dormiphonics
  4. dormition
  5. dormitions
  6. dormitive
  7. dormitive principle
  8. dormitive principles
  9. dormitive virtue
  10. dormitive virtues
  11. dormitives

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dormitive (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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