Word.ws English Dictionary

sleeps rough

sleeps rough is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 sleeps rough

What is sleeps rough the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Sleeps rough is the third-person singular simple present indicative of sleep rough.

Words near sleeps rough in the dictionary

  1. sleeps off
  2. sleeps on
  3. sleeps one off
  4. sleeps out
  5. sleeps over
  6. sleeps rough
  7. sleeps together
  8. sleeps with
  9. sleeps with one eye open
  10. sleeps with one's fathers
  11. sleeps with the fishes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sleeps 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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Cite this entry: “sleeps rough.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sleeps_rough. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.