doze
1 Americanverb (used without object)
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to sleep lightly or fitfully.
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to fall into a light sleep unintentionally (often followed byoff ).
He dozed off during the sermon.
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to sleep for a short time; nap.
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to be dull or half asleep.
verb (used with object)
noun
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dozes
plural
verb (used with or without object)
verb
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to sleep lightly or intermittently
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(often foll by off) to fall into a light sleep
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of doze1
1640–50; originally (now obsolete) to stupefy, make drowsy; compare Scots, N England dialect dozened, Middle English ( Scots ) dosnyt, dosinnit stupefied, dazed; akin to Old Norse dūsa rest, Swedish dialect dusa doze, slumber, Middle Low German dusen to be thoughtless; cf. daze
Origin of doze2
First recorded in 1940–45; shortened form of bulldoze
Explanation
Are you sleepy? Maybe you need to doze a little. To doze is to sleep lightly or to take a nap. To doze is to just have a little sleep: either a short nap or a very light snooze. Since doze and snooze almost rhyme — and snoring sounds a little like ZZZZZZZZZZZ — the letter Z might be a good way to remember this word. Just make sure you don't "doze off" in class.
Vocabulary lists containing doze
The Lazy, Hazy Days of Summer
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Festival of Sleep Day
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The Voyage of the Frog
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
In a blaring nightclub in wartime Myanmar, partied-out revellers doze until dawn by the dancefloor, wary of journeying home despite the end of a post-coup curfew.
From Barron's ● Jun. 12, 2026
They took naps on Sunday to make sure they didn’t doze off.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 17, 2026
As her rivals nervously shuffle in their boots, Shiffrin will clear space on the ground, fold a parka as a pillow, shut her blue eyes and doze off.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 3, 2026
Speaking to the BBC, Mr Tran, 40, said it happened soon after take-off when he would usually be getting ready to doze off.
From BBC ● Mar. 18, 2024
I fall into a doze and do not at first realize that evening is approaching.
From "All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel" by Erich Maria Remarque
Footage released on Tuesday shows police officers conferring on how to arrest the suspect as he apparently dozes in a car with a running engine.
From BBC ● Apr. 5, 2023
Her second husband, Remy Burr, sits with her, and their infant son dozes in a nearby carrier.
From New York Times ● Jan. 4, 2022
Suspended in midair inside a stylish L.A. apartment, a Black man dozes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 3, 2021
Food and sleep will be put aside, except when someone dozes off in a seat or on a colleague’s shoulder.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 3, 2021
As he dozes, it seems to him a room one can fall asleep in quite easily, a comfortable room, warm, and nearly dark now.
From "Farewell to Manzanar" by Jeanne Houston
AFP on Saturday saw migrant minors milling around in a disused industrial park in Ceuta, while others dozed on the pavements outside.
From Barron's ● Aug. 2, 2026
"As suddenly as you began, you stopped, your anger evaporated, and then you dozed off."
From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026
Through the night, several of them allegedly followed the southbound Brink’s truck, which was piloted by one driver while another dozed in the vehicle’s sleeping compartment.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 17, 2025
She was home at 9 p.m. and quickly dozed off, but within hours, she woke her mother up.
From Salon ● Nov. 1, 2024
She slept on her feet, and she’d dozed through everything so far.
From "The Teacher’s Funeral" by Richard Peck
Spanish journalist Roberto Gómez was dozing on the high-speed Renfe train, when the train stopped and an announcement was relayed to passengers that there was congestion on the tracks.
From BBC ● Oct. 28, 2026
In his Hall of Fame acceptance speech, he reserved a special mention for a teacher at Wilson High in Long Beach, the one that envisioned a writer blossoming within a student dozing in class.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 27, 2026
When the fire alerts sounded on telephones, "I thought everything was going to burn, the house and everything," she said at the sports hall, where they sat dozing and eating snacks.
From Barron's ● Jul. 25, 2026
He can often be seen sunning himself on the dock, with other sea lions dozing or barking away nearby.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 26, 2026
Old Sutic, who had been dozing against a wall nearby, stood as if to intervene, but before he could say a word, the Handsome One took action.
From "The Ugly One" by Leanne Statland Ellis
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
