Skip to main content
PlainSpell

sleeper

sleep·er/ˈsliːpə(ɹ)/noun, verb

sleeper is spelled S-L-E-E-P-E-R: 7 letters and 2 syllables (sleep·er). It appears 2.9 times per million words in written English, the 15,798th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, sleeper means “Someone who sleeps” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of sleeper is sleepers.

How many letters and syllables are in sleeper?

Letters7: S-L-E-E-P-E-R
Syllables2: sleep·er
In writing2.9 times per million words; the 15,798th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How common is sleeper?

Sleeper appears 2.9 times per million words in written English, the 15,798th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce sleeper?

  • /ˈsliːpə(ɹ)/

Sleeper has 2 syllables, split sleep·er in writing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-au-sleeper.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of sleeper

  • sleepers plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • sleepering participle, present
  • sleepered participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does sleeper mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    Someone who sleeps.

    I'm a light sleeper: I get woken up by the smallest of sounds.

  2. 2

    That which lies dormant, as a law.

  3. 3

    A spy, saboteur, or terrorist who lives unobtrusively in a community until activated by a prearranged signal; may be part of a sleeper cell.

  4. 4

    A small starter earring, worn to prevent a piercing from closing.

  5. 5

    A railway sleeping car.

    We spent a night on an uncomfortable sleeper between Athens and Vienna.

  6. 6

    A sleeper hold.

  7. 7

    Something that achieves unexpected success after an interval of time.

    A box-office bomb when it first came out, the film was a sleeper, becoming much more popular decades after being released.

  8. 8

    Any member of the family Odontobutidae of goby-like bottom-feeding freshwater fish.

  9. 9

    UKA railroad tie.

  10. 10

    A structural beam in a floor running perpendicular to both the joists beneath and floorboards above.

  11. 11

    A heavy floor timber in a ship's bottom.

  12. 12

    The lowest, or bottom, tier of casks.

verb

  1. 1

    rareTo mark a calf by cutting its ear.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Sleeper in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchdormeur (someone who sleeps)
GermanSchläfer (someone who sleeps), Strampelanzug (type of pajamas that covers the whole body), Lagerholz, Futterholz, Unterlageholz (structural timber in a floor perpendicular to…), Schwelle (structural beam at the bottom of a wall, a roof…)
Portuguesedorminhoco, dorminhoca (someone who sleeps)
Spanishdormilón (someone who sleeps), pijama con los pies (type of pajamas that covers the whole body), durmiente (rung on a train track)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does sleeper come from?

From Middle English sleper, equivalent to sleep + -er.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after sleeper