Word.ws English Dictionary

slumber

Syllables: slum·berUK/ˈslʌm.bə//ˈslʌm.bɚ/

slumber noun: a very light state of sleep, almost awake.

Noun

slumber (plural slumbers)

  1. A very light state of sleep, almost awake.
    • Fast asleep? It is no matter; / Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber.1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    • Ev’n Luſt and Envy ſleep, yet Love denies / Reſt to my Soul, and ſlumber to my Eyes.1665 (first performance), John Dryden, The Indian Emperour, or, The Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards. […], London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for H[enry] Herringman […], published 1667, →OCLC, Act III...
    1. (broadly) A very heavy state of sleep.
  2. (figuratively) A state of ignorance or inaction.
    • Marcel Duchamp's urinal and readymades seemed in the beginning to be insider jokes or jokelike paradoxes meant to awaken people from their aesthetic slumbers.2009, Ben-Ami Scharfstein, Art without borders: a philosophical exploration of art and humanity
  3. (rare) The snooze button on an alarm clock.

Verb

slumber (third-person singular simple present slumbers, present participle slumbering, simple past and past participle slumbered)

  1. (intransitive) To be in a very light state of sleep, almost awake.
    • He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Psalm 121:4
    • If Sleep and Death be truly one,
      ⁠And every spirit’s folded bloom
      ⁠Thro’ all its intervital gloom
      In some long trance should slumber on; […]1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XLII”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 65
  2. (intransitive) To be inactive or negligent.
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To lay to sleep.
    • slumber his conscience1642, Henry Wotton, A Short View of the Life and Death of George Villers, Duke of Buckingham
  4. (obsolete, transitive) To stun; to stupefy.
    • Then vp he tooke the slombred sencelesse corse.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

slumber meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Telugu and Malayalam

slumber in Urdu

غفلت

slumber in Bengali

ঘুমানো, তন্দ্রাচ্ছন্ন থাকা

slumber in Telugu

to slumber, doze or sink in sleep
కూర్కు kūrku

slumber in Malayalam

ഉറക്കം
More languagesFewer languages
slumber in Kannada
ನಿದ್ರೆ, ನಿದ್ದೆ, ನಿದ್ರಾವಸ್ಥೆ, ಸುಖನಿದ್ರೆ
slumber in Sanskrit
निद्रा nidrā
slumber in Arabic
سِنَة sina
slumber in Persian
پینکی pinaki

Examples of slumber in a sentence

  • The slumbering giant that was China has finally awoken.
  • He grunted and murmured, until his face calmed, the eyelids smoothing into slumber, the brows unfurrowing.
  • Sophie had one quick feed for the road and slipped into milk-drunk slumber.

All 28 example sentences with slumber

Forms of slumber

Noun
pluralslumbers
alternative form (obsolete)slumbre
Verb
third-person singular presentslumbers
present participleslumbering
past participleslumbered
pastslumbered

Plural of slumber: slumbers

Origin of slumber

From Middle English slombren, slomren, frequentative of Middle English slummen, slumen (“to doze”), probably from Middle English slume (“slumber”), from Old English slūma, from Proto-Germanic *slūm- (“slack, loose, limp, flabby”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)lew- (“loose, limp, flabby”). Cognate with West Frisian slommerje, slûmerje (“to slumber”), Dutch sluimeren (“to slumber”), German schlummern (“to slumber, doze”), Swedish slummer (“to slumber”). By surface analysis, sloom + -er.

Words formed from slumber

Phrases with slumber

Words that rhyme with slumber

Questions about slumber

What does slumber mean?
Slumber means a very light state of sleep, almost awake.
What is slumber in Urdu?
Slumber in Urdu is غفلت. See Slumber meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is slumber?
Slumber can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce slumber?
Slumber is pronounced /ˈslʌm.bə/ (UK).
What is the plural of slumber?
The plural of slumber is slumbers.

Words near slumber in the dictionary

  1. slum-dweller
  2. slum-dwellers
  3. slum-ridden
  4. Slumbai
  5. Slumbay
  6. slumber
  7. slumber coach
  8. slumber coaches
  9. slumber parties
  10. slumber party
  11. slumber room

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: slumber (page history and authors); slumber (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); slumber (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); కూర్కు (Telugu) (page history and authors); slumber (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); slumber (Kannada Wiktionary) (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-slumber.ogg.

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