Word.ws English Dictionary

sleep off

sleep off verb: to get rid of (a pain, illness, condition) by sleeping.

Verb

sleep off (third-person singular simple present sleeps off, present participle sleeping off, simple past and past participle slept off)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To get rid of (a pain, illness, condition) by sleeping.
    • On the other hand, drugs with drowsiness as a side-effect (eg certain types of analgesia, antidepressants) are best administered in the evening so that patients can sleep off the effect and be alert the following day.2003, Christine Brooker, Maggie Nicol, Nursing adults: the practice of caring

Forms of sleep off

third-person singular presentsleeps off
present participlesleeping off
past participleslept off
pastslept off
alternative formsleep it out
alternative formsleep it off

Questions about sleep off

What does sleep off mean?
Sleep off means to get rid of (a pain, illness, condition) by sleeping.
What part of speech is sleep off?
Sleep off is a verb.
What is the past tense of sleep off?
The past tense of sleep off is slept off.

Words near sleep off in the dictionary

  1. sleep mode
  2. sleep modes
  3. sleep nappies
  4. sleep nappy
  5. sleep of the just
  6. sleep off
  7. sleep on
  8. sleep one off
  9. sleep out
  10. sleep over
  11. sleep paralyses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sleep off (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.

Last updated:

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

Cite this entry: “sleep off.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sleep_off. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.