sleeping

verb

1. (form-of, gerund, participle, present)present participle and gerund of sleep

   “‘No. I only opened the door a foot and put my head in. The street lamps shine into that room. I could see him. He was all right. Sleeping like a great grampus. Poor, poor chap.’”

adj

1. (not-comparable)Asleep.

   “We found a sleeping child inside the church.”

   “Irregular bedtimes may disrupt healthy brain development in young children, according to a study of intelligence and sleeping habits. ¶ Going to bed at a different time each night affected girls more than boys, but both fared worse on mental tasks than children who had a set bedtime, researchers found.”

2. (not-comparable)Used for sleep; used to produce sleep.

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)The state of being asleep, or an instance of this.

   “And as I lay and lened and loked in the wateres / I slombred in a slepyng, it swyved so merye.”

   “[…] there are no words to describe the way she negotiated the abyss between her dreams, those wakings strange as her sleepings.”