Word.ws English Dictionary

half-asleep

half-asleep adjective: showing signs of being asleep or very sleepy, as not demonstrating full energy or attention.

Adjective

half-asleep (not comparable)

  1. Showing signs of being asleep or very sleepy, as not demonstrating full energy or attention.
    • He gently lifted the half-asleep child into bed.

Origin of half-asleep

From half- + asleep.

Questions about half-asleep

What does half-asleep mean?
Half-asleep means showing signs of being asleep or very sleepy, as not demonstrating full energy or attention.
What part of speech is half-asleep?
Half-asleep is an adjective.

Words near half-asleep in the dictionary

  1. half-angels
  2. half-ape
  3. half-apes
  4. half-arse
  5. half-arsed
  6. half-asleep
  7. half-ass
  8. half-assed
  9. half-assedly
  10. half-assedness
  11. half-assery

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: half-asleep (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-half-asleep.wav.

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