sleeper
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
7 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "sleeper", 7-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 "sleeper" 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 "sleeper" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
sleeper is aEnglishnoun. It means: Someone who sleeps. Pronounced /ˈsliːpə(ɹ)/. Often confused with sleeve and sleeps.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sleeper |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈsliːpə(ɹ)/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #15,911 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 12 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for sleeper is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈsliːpə(ɹ)/. Corpus data places it at rank #15,911 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 14 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 10 documented wrong-spelling variants for sleeper, with forms such as "lseeper", "seleper", and "sleeepr". 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 12 confusable-pair relationships, "sleeve", "sleeps", "sleepy", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English sleper, equivalent to sleep + -er. 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 sleeper, spelled S-L-E-E-P-E-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Someone who sleeps.
- 2That which lies dormant, as a law.
- 3A spy, saboteur, or terrorist who lives unobtrusively in a community until activated by a prearranged signal; may be part of a sleeper cell.
- 4A small starter earring, worn to prevent a piercing from closing.
- 5A railway sleeping car.
- 6A sleeper hold.
- 7Something that achieves unexpected success after an interval of time.
- 8Any of family Odontobutidae of goby-like bottom-feeding freshwater fish.
- 9A nurse shark (family Ginglymostomatidae).
- 10A type of pajama for a person, especially a child, that covers the whole body, including the feet.
- 11An automobile which has been internally modified to excess, while retaining a mostly stock appearance in order to fool opponents in a drag race, or to avoid the attention of the police.
- 12A sedative.
- 13A bet placed on the gambling table and then forgotten about by the gambler.
- 14A pod or similar device containing a person in cryosleep.
Etymology
From Middle English sleper, equivalent to sleep + -er.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: lseeper,seleper,sleeepr,sleeperr,sleepper,sleepre,slepeer,sleper,slleeper,ssleeper
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for sleeper
Misspelling Variants of "sleeper"
Frequency rank: #15,911 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: