sleepwalker
Americannoun
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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.
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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.
Etymology
Origin of sleepwalker
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.
“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
They’re getting a Vikings team that has a bruised confidence tender to the touch, or an angry sleepwalker who has suddenly snapped to attention.
From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 23, 2018
But Perry is low-key bordering on sleepwalker dull, and the standard-issue cop-vs.-serial-killer story presents Cross as more of a dopey psycho-babbler than a guy whose incisive mind cuts right to the heart of the case.
From Seattle Times • Oct. 17, 2012
“Well, you have the look on your face you used to wear. And you’ve got that sleepwalker light in your eyes. Does this hurt your feelings?”
From "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
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.
