sleepwalker

American  

[sleep-waw-ker] / ˈslipˌwɔ kər /

noun

sleepwalkers plural

1. a person who walks, eats, or performs other motor acts while asleep and is unaware of doing so upon awakening; a person with a disorder characterized by this.

   A sleepwalker may do something that could cause injury, such as climbing out of a window or walking into objects.

2. a person who acts seemingly without awareness, feeling, aim, or will.

   My parents were sleepwalkers, moving about their world as if oblivious to it and to themselves.

---

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• sleepwalkers
  plural

Etymology

Origin of sleepwalker

sleep + walker

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

sleepwalker sleepwalkers

I go outside in my pajamas like a sleepwalker to retrieve my L.A.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 30, 2023

“Like a sleepwalker jolted awake,” Merriman writes, “it’s as though Siegfried had looked back at everything he’d done and didn’t like what he’d seen.”

From Washington Post ● Sep. 23, 2021

“All around hangs a slumber upon these halls, and things as yet unfathomed still occur,” the Fraulein intones like a sleepwalker.

From The Guardian ● Jun. 19, 2020

Let’s hope he was allowed to wander back to the locker room without interruption, as waking a sleepwalker can be very dangerous.

From Slate ● May 4, 2019

Trudging forward like a sleepwalker in the bitter cold, I make my way down the driveway, then turn left and plod up the rutted dirt road to the falling-down bridge.

From "Orphan Train" by Christina Baker Kline

I felt as if I was the only person awake in a city of sleepwalkers.

From Salon ● Sep. 1, 2025

Evelyn and Richard also learn about the ypnovátes, the sleepwalkers, a couple who drowned on the island the summer before.

From New York Times ● Apr. 6, 2024

This is especially true as the artist’s attempts to wake up the sleepwalkers of society have grown into complex and organized activities, involving dozens of bodies working in physical harmony.

From The New Yorker ● Nov. 22, 2019

These suburban sleepwalkers, unsatisfied by their comfortable lives and digital toys, awaken from their malaise by taking a walk on the wild side.

From Seattle Times ● Jun. 6, 2018

Somewhere in that direction is Schulpforta with its dark spires, its bed wetters and sleepwalkers and bullies.

From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr