soporific
Americanadjective
-
causing or tending to cause sleep.
-
pertaining to or characterized by sleep or sleepiness; sleepy; drowsy.
noun
-
soporifics
plural
adjective
-
inducing sleep
-
drowsy; sleepy
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of soporific
1655–65; < Latin sopor sopor + -i- + -fic; compare French soporifique
Explanation
Something that is soporific is sleep-inducing. Certain medicines, but also extreme coziness, can have a soporific effect. In the 1680’s, soporific, which doubles as both adjective and noun, was formed from the French soporifique. That word, in turn, came from the Latin sopor “deep sleep.” Beloved Peter Rabbit author Beatrix Potter once noted that, “It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is 'soporific'."
Vocabulary lists containing soporific
Jane Eyre
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Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
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"Simon's Saga," Vocabulary from Episode 6
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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:
Yasmina, by contrast, who grows up to be an economic consultant, exists in a world of chilly blue-gray conference rooms and soporific slide shows.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
Before long, what had been a soporific race turned into a surreal one.
From BBC ● Jun. 7, 2026
Musty retreads of Ibsen and Chekhov, besides being counter to the maverick spirit of their play, can be soporific endurance tests.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 9, 2024
It’s so effective a soporific that most nights I struggle to read for more than 10 minutes, which is both satisfying and maddening.
From New York Times ● Apr. 20, 2024
One of his officers then broke the soporific silence of the tent.
From "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Exposure to sunlight prevents the brain from producing melatonin and other natural soporifics.
From Science Magazine ● Nov. 23, 2016
At least these were incendiary devices; elsewhere one found soporifics.
From Time Magazine Archive
Many of the antihistamines, intended to relieve allergies, are also prescribed as soporifics.
From Time Magazine Archive
It surely ought to work for those viewers lulled these many years by cinema soporifics.
From Time Magazine Archive
A quickened conscience is not the best of soporifics, and Revere was a long time in getting to sleep.
From Woven with the Ship A Novel of 1865 by Cyrus Townsend Brady
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
