sleep
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "sleep", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "sleep" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "sleep" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
sleep is aEnglishverb. It means: To rest in a state of reduced consciousness. Pronounced /sliːp/. It ranks #957 in English word frequency. Often confused with slip and slew.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sleep |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /sliːp/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #957 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for sleep is 5 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /sliːp/. Corpus data places it at rank #957 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for sleep, with forms such as "lseep", "selep", and "sleepp". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "slip", "slew", "slop", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English slepen, from Anglian Old English slēpan (West Saxon Old English slǣpan), from Proto-West Germanic *slāpan, from Proto-Germanic *slēpaną (“to sleep”). Cognates Cognate with North Frisian sleepe, sliap, sliip, släipe (“to sleep”), Saterlan… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is sleep, spelled S-L-E-E-P, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To rest in a state of reduced consciousness.
- 2To have sexual intercourse (see sleep with).
- 3To accommodate in beds.
- 4To be careless, inattentive, or unconcerned; not to be vigilant; to live thoughtlessly.
- 5To be dead.
- 6To be, or appear to be, in repose; to be quiet; to be unemployed, unused, or unagitated; to rest; to lie dormant.
- 7To wait for a period of time without performing any action.
- 8To place into a state of hibernation.
- 9To spin on its axis with no other perceptible motion.
- 10To cause (a spinning top or yo-yo) to spin on its axis with no other perceptible motion.
Etymology
From Middle English slepen, from Anglian Old English slēpan (West Saxon Old English slǣpan), from Proto-West Germanic *slāpan, from Proto-Germanic *slēpaną (“to sleep”). Cognates Cognate with North Frisian sleepe, sliap, sliip, släipe (“to sleep”), Saterland Frisian släipe (“to sleep”), West Frisian sliepe (“to sleep”), Alemannic German schlaaffe, schlaafä, schlafe, schloafe, schloafen, schlofe, schlàfu (“to sleep”), Bavarian schlofn, schlåfn, sghlofn (“to sleep”), Central Franconian schlofe (“to sleep”), Cimbrian slaafan, slafan, slavan (“to sleep”), Dutch and Low German slapen (“to sleep”), German schlafen (“to sleep”), Limburgish schloëpe, slaope (“to sleep”), Luxembourgish schlofen (“to sleep”), Mòcheno schloven (“to sleep”), Vilamovian šłȫfa, śłöfa (“to sleep”), Yiddish שלאָפֿן (shlofn, “to sleep”), Crimean Gothic schlipen (“to sleep”), Gothic 𐍃𐌻𐌴𐍀𐌰𐌽 (slēpan, “to sleep”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: lseep,selep,sleepp,slep,slepe,slleep,ssleep
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for sleep
Misspelling Variants of "sleep"
Frequency rank: #957 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: