Word.ws English Dictionary

sleeping policeman

sleeping policeman noun: a speed bump.

Noun

sleeping policeman (plural sleeping policemen)

  1. (Caribbean, UK, idiomatic) A speed bump.
    • We don't care much to figure out terms like "brolly" (umbrella) and "sleeping policeman" (speed bump).2000 July 5, William Weir, “They're looking up 'Yankspeak' for the Oxford English Dictionary”, in CNN.com, retrieved 18 Sep 2007

Forms of sleeping policeman

pluralsleeping policemen

Questions about sleeping policeman

What does sleeping policeman mean?
Sleeping policeman means a speed bump.
What part of speech is sleeping policeman?
Sleeping policeman is a noun.
What is the plural of sleeping policeman?
The plural of sleeping policeman is sleeping policemen.

Words near sleeping policeman in the dictionary

  1. sleeping pads
  2. sleeping partner
  3. sleeping partners
  4. sleeping pill
  5. sleeping pills
  6. sleeping policeman
  7. sleeping policemen
  8. sleeping power
  9. sleeping powers
  10. sleeping quarters
  11. sleeping rough

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sleeping policeman (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: En-au-sleeping policeman.ogg.

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