adjective
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heavy with sleepiness; sleepy
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inducing sleep; soporific
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sluggish or lethargic; dull
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of drowsy
Explanation
Drowsy means sleepy and having low energy. When you’re sitting in the warm sunlight after a big lunch, and you’re so drowsy you can’t keep your eyes open, it’s not the right time to try organizing your desk. Ah drowsy, a word that describes slow-moving lions and charming little towns equally well. It has a pleasant association to it, a nice cozy sleepiness, like the sort of feeling you have when you can’t exactly figure out why your eyes keep closing, they just do. Wine makes some people drowsy and a boring documentary will definitely do it to you. Drowsy comes from an Old English word meaning "falling," and has evolved into falling asleep.
Vocabulary lists containing drowsy
"Macbeth" Vocabulary from Act III
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"The Weary Blues" by Langston Hughes
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Milkweed
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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:
A team that had never won so much as nine straight games during the drowsy regular season suddenly rattled off 13 straight victories in the playoffs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 14, 2026
For example, Samsara’s cameras used in delivery trucks can help determine when a driver is distracted or drowsy, and deliver real-time alerts.
From Barron's ● Jun. 11, 2026
Despite the substantial harm caused by drowsy driving, “it’s still culturally accepted, which is a problem,” says Joseph Dzierzewski, senior vice president of research at the National Sleep Foundation.
From Slate ● Nov. 26, 2025
She values the importance of kindergarten learning, she said, but even without a fever, if her child is drowsy or coughing, he “won’t be paying attention anyway.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 22, 2025
On a drowsy Sunday afternoon, a man in a long dark coat hesitated in front of a house on a tree-lined street.
From "The Cruel Prince" by Holly Black
But because Iridium was only a near-failure and not a total one, it’s also a peculiar — and drowsier — turnaround story.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 17, 2016
The volunteers still felt drowsier in the afternoon.
From BBC ● Oct. 29, 2014
After that, the show became a kind of dinner-theater version of itself -- flaccid, repetitious, drowsier than the Texas economy -- and receded discreetly into the haze of Has-Been.
From Time Magazine Archive
They had give him ether or somethin' and so he kept gettin' drowsier and drowsier, and finally died in his sleep.
From Mitch Miller by John Sloan
And while I looked, I grew drowsier and drowsier; my eyes would close, then half open, and there would be the hantu sails and the fire for company, growing more and more indistinct.
From The Spinner's Book of Fiction by Various
“Ma Belle, My Beauty” comes pre-drenched in the languid pleasures of late summer; for anyone looking for a respite from and a celebration of the season’s drowsiest dog days, it works a trick.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 24, 2021
Up India's Hooghly River one day last February sailed a weird vessel which made even the drowsiest citizens rub their eyes.
From Time Magazine Archive
A rooster crows somewhere far off—surely of all sounds the drowsiest.
From There's Pippins and Cheese to Come by Charles S. (Charles Stephen) Brooks
Patzcuaro is one of the laziest, drowsiest, most delightful pimples on the earth to be found in a long search.
From Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras — Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond by Harry Alverson Franck
Several days afterward there was a tap at the study door in the drowsiest part of the afternoon.
From Child and Country A Book of the Younger Generation by Will Levington Comfort
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.
