sleepwalker
Americannoun
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sleepwalkers
plural
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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.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
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.
See Examples For:
“Like a sleepwalker … I know what I have to do,” Crimo narrated in another rap video posted late last year.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 7, 2022
“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
Jerry walked to the bus like a sleepwalker.
From "The Chocolate War" by Robert Cormier
The methodical steps toward war took on a life of their own, moving us like sleepwalkers towards disaster.
From Salon ● Feb. 26, 2022
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
The worst is “The Crowd,” a pretentious new film in which Mr. Parreno had actors, some of whom may be hypnotized, move like sleepwalkers around the drill hall itself.
From New York Times ● Jun. 12, 2015
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
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.
