Word.ws English Dictionary

sleepish

/ˈsliːpɪʃ/

sleepish adjective: sleepy; drowsy.

Adjective

sleepish (comparative more sleepish, superlative most sleepish)

  1. sleepy; drowsy
    • One, my lord, that doth so palpably, so apparently make her adulteries a trophy, whiles the poting-stick to her unsatiate goatish abomination jeers at, and flouts your sleepish, and more than sleepish, security.1633, Iohn Ford [i.e., John Ford], Loues Sacrifice. A Tragedie […], London: […] I[ohn] B[eale] for Hugh Beeston, […], →OCLC, (please specify the page)
    • She answered the telephone with a sleepish sounding voice, since she wasn't fully awake yet.2010, Brenda Croan, Hidden in a Pillow
    Synonyms:
    sleepbound, somnolent, adrowse, bedroomy, dozy, dopey, dragging one's tail, drowsy, eyelids at half-mast, nodding off

Synonyms of sleepish

12 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Forms of sleepish

comparativemore sleepish
superlativemost sleepish

Origin of sleepish

From sleep + -ish.

Questions about sleepish

What does sleepish mean?
Sleepish means sleepy; drowsy.
What part of speech is sleepish?
Sleepish is an adjective.
How do you pronounce sleepish?
Sleepish is pronounced /ˈsliːpɪʃ/.

Words near sleepish in the dictionary

  1. sleeping with the fishes
  2. sleepingly
  3. sleepings
  4. sleepingwear
  5. sleepiphany
  6. sleepish
  7. sleepless
  8. sleeplessly
  9. sleeplessness
  10. sleeplessnesses
  11. sleeplike

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sleepish (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:

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