Word.ws English Dictionary

sleep with one's fathers

sleep with one's fathers verb: to be buried together with one's forebears; hence, to die; also, to be dead.

Verb

sleep with one's fathers (third-person singular simple present sleeps with one's fathers, present participle sleeping with one's fathers, simple past and past participle slept with one's fathers)

  1. (dated, literary, obsolete) To be buried together with one's forebears; hence, to die; also, to be dead.

Forms of sleep with one's fathers

third-person singular presentsleeps with one's fathers
present participlesleeping with one's fathers
past participleslept with one's fathers
pastslept with one's fathers

Origin of sleep with one's fathers

Calque of Biblical Hebrew וַיִּשְׁכַּב עִם־אֲבֹתָיו (wayyiškaḇ ʿim-ʾăḇōṯâw, literally “he slept with his fathers”) (found, for example, in the Bible at 1 Kings 2:10); compare be gathered to one's fathers.

Questions about sleep with one's fathers

What does sleep with one's fathers mean?
Sleep with one's fathers means to be buried together with one's forebears; hence, to die; also, to be dead.
What part of speech is sleep with one's fathers?
Sleep with one's fathers is a verb.
What is the past tense of sleep with one's fathers?
The past tense of sleep with one's fathers is slept with one's fathers.

Words near sleep with one's fathers in the dictionary

  1. sleep twitches
  2. sleep under the same bridge
  3. sleep well
  4. sleep with
  5. sleep with one eye open
  6. sleep with one's fathers
  7. sleep with the fishes
  8. sleep-at-noon
  9. sleep-ate
  10. sleep-deprived
  11. sleep-drunk

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sleep with one's fathers (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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