Word.ws English Dictionary

sleeping rough

sleeping rough is the present participle and gerund of sleep rough.

Meaning of sleep rough

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) Of a homeless person, to sleep outdoors, particularly as opposed to sleeping in a shelter or similar.
    • I will warrant they prove such roaring boys as I knew when I served under Lumford and Goring, [...] —sleeping rough on the trenches, and dying stubbornly in their boats. Ah! those merry days are gone.1826, [Walter Scott], chapter IV, in Woodstock; Or, The Cavalier. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and...

Questions about sleeping rough

What is sleeping rough the present participle and gerund of?
Sleeping rough is the present participle and gerund of sleep rough.

Words near sleeping rough in the dictionary

  1. sleeping policeman
  2. sleeping policemen
  3. sleeping power
  4. sleeping powers
  5. sleeping quarters
  6. sleeping rough
  7. Sleeping Sexton
  8. sleeping sickness
  9. sleeping sicknesses
  10. sleeping suit
  11. sleeping table

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sleeping rough (page history and authors); sleep rough (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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