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
When you eat too much, it can make you drowsy and cause severe stomach upsets, she says.
From BBC ● Mar. 19, 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
I began to feel drowsy, and as I dozed off, I thought about this world and the things we humans struggled for, and all the ways in which we imprisoned ourselves, and each other.
From "Flying Through Water" by Mamle Wolo
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
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
In tones that grow drowsier and drowsier, while his articulation becomes more and more indistinct, Harry stumbles through Shakespeare's immortal verse.
From 'O Thou, My Austria!' by Schubin, Ossip
“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 Brooks, Charles S. (Charles Stephen)
For it extended all along Plutoria Avenue, where the street is widest and the elm trees are at their leafiest and the motors at their very drowsiest.
From Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich by Leacock, Stephen
In me, who had known her for but a little while, she awakened my deepest and drowsiest ambition, the desire to express in pictures the light and the shade of the London I knew.
From The Best Short Stories of 1917 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story by O'Brien, Edward J. (Edward Joseph Harrington)
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.
