drowse
Americanverb (used without object)
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to be sleepy or half-asleep.
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to be dull or sluggish.
verb (used with object)
-
to pass or spend (time) in drowsing (often followed byaway ).
He drowsed away the morning.
-
to make sleepy.
noun
verb
noun
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
drowsesimple
-
drowsessimple
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have drowsedperfect
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has drowsedperfect
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am drowsingprogressive
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are drowsingprogressive
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is drowsingprogressive
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have been drowsingperfect progressive
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has been drowsingperfect progressive
Past
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drowsedsimple
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had drowsedperfect
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was drowsingprogressive
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were drowsingprogressive
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had been drowsingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of drowse
before 900; Old English drūsian to droop, become sluggish (not recorded in ME); akin to Old English drēosan to fall
Explanation
To doze lightly, or nearly fall asleep, is to drowse. If you stay up too late watching scary movies, you might start to drowse the next morning in English class. You've probably found yourself beginning to drowse when you're very sleepy or bored. You'll know you're starting to drowse when your eyelids get heavy and your mind wanders. Be careful though—if you drowse too long at the beach, you may end up with a sunburn! Drowse comes from the adjective drowsy, from an Old English root meaning "sink."
Vocabulary lists containing drowse
Tolkien Reading Day, List 9
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Charlotte's Web
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Festival of Sleep Day
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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 the Japanese Diet, Premier Yoshida will often drowse through the opposition speeches, sometimes bestirring himself to deal with questions: "I will not answer that."
From Time Magazine Archive
The town's park benches are crowded with bargain widowers -- husbands who drowse in the sunshine while their wives continue the hunt.
From Time Magazine Archive
The American cast keeps its English accents tidy but not its performances, and Director Alan Schneider lets the first act drowse.
From Time Magazine Archive
Once ashore, the voyagers were soon far too busy to lose themselves in the drowse of flowers.
From Time Magazine Archive
Music spirals out of the radios, and it is splendid to drowse on the davenport, to be warm and fed, to feel the sentences hoist her up and carry her somewhere else.
From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr
Wrinkled as a crone, it drowses and yawns, never really wakes or sleeps soundly, sucks weakly, is capable of a faint squeak, grunt, bleat or wail.
From Time Magazine Archive
Caesar landed where Deal now drowses and William the Conqueror made good his bid at Hastings. just beyond the Sussex line.
From Time Magazine Archive
Up north at Basle in the German-speaking neck of Switzerland drowses a bleak building once the Hotel de I'Univers, today the financial watch tower not only of Europe and Asia but of the entire world.
From Time Magazine Archive
Hot sun fries the big stadium at Southern University in Baton Rouge, La. The track meet drowses through the sweet tedium of late afternoon.
From Time Magazine Archive
I guess it is no surprise that he drowses during lectures.
From "The Cruel Prince" by Holly Black
The diary comics of interactions between stick-figure depictions of Wertz and her son, Felix, will resonate with anyone who has ever drowsed through days with a newborn.
From Salon ● Jun. 27, 2026
Of the 63 subjects who dropped the glass as they drowsed, 26 did so after they had already passed through N1 sleep.
From Scientific American ● Apr. 3, 2022
After staying up all night at the Stork Club, Mr. Roche drowsed off midway through the early-morning interview.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 2, 2019
Headed for the Dardanelles assault in 1915, Brooke got septicemia from a lip infection, drowsed off in a fever on shipboard and was buried on the Aegean island of Skyros.
From Time Magazine Archive
Some nights she drowsed, but never for more than an hour.
From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin
All across the ravaged Earth, the cracked foundations of the twentieth century were drowsing, waking, and recognizing themselves.
From Slate ● Nov. 28, 2020
Late one night the drowsing pro got a phone call at home.
From Golf Digest ● Apr. 17, 2020
While summer often wakes me at 4am with dawn, in winter I can sleep for hours, surrendering to my bed shortly after 9pm, and drowsing there until my morning alarm.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 9, 2020
Then I was in motion, drowsing on a bus, a grizzled figure seated beside me, Calvin Schiraldi again.
From Salon ● Jun. 20, 2015
The greyhound lay on its side, drowsing, one chestnut-colored eye only partly closed and rolling grotesquely in the socket.
From "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt
Definitions 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.
