Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Inducing sleep; soporific.
- adjective Of, relating to, or occurring in the state of intermediate consciousness preceding sleep.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Leading to sleep; inducing sleep; hypnotic.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Leading to sleep; -- applied to the illusions of one who is half asleep.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective That
induces sleep ;soporific ,somniferous . - adjective That accompanies falling asleep; especially, pertaining to the semi-conscious period immediately preceding
sleep .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective sleep inducing
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Because the existing word hypnagogic means “of, relating to, or occurring in the state of intermediate consciousness preceding sleep,” and hypnopompic means “of or relating to the partially conscious state that precedes complete awakening from sleep,” many people came up with hyp - coinages.
Word Fugitives 2006
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Because the existing word hypnagogic means “of, relating to, or occurring in the state of intermediate consciousness preceding sleep,” and hypnopompic means “of or relating to the partially conscious state that precedes complete awakening from sleep,” many people came up with hyp - coinages.
Word Fugitives 2006
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As to her own ordeal, Henry told her there was a name for the strange, shifting images you see just before sleep: they were called hypnagogic hallucinations, and they often occurred in connection with sleep paralysis.
Incubus Arensberg, Ann, 1937- 1999
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The hallucinations produced in this way are called hypnagogic (from its derivation this term is properly applied only to phenomena observed at the instant when we fall asleep, or when we are imperfectly awakened, and not to the period of most perfect repose), and they occur when the subject is not in a condition favorable to sound sleep.
Hygienic Physiology : with Special Reference to the Use of Alcoholic Drinks and Narcotics Joel Dorman Steele
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Apparently it's called a hypnagogic hallucination (if it happens as you're going to sleep) and a hypnopompic hallucination if it happens as you're waking.
WalesOnline - Home 2010
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Episodes frequently occur at sleep onset, termed hypnagogic, or while waking up from sleep, termed hypnopompic (Solomonova).
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In medical parlance, the twitching is called hypnagogic myoclonus (the first word refers to sleep and the second to muscle twitches).
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It felt like this was the description of a kind of hypnagogic state, one in which reading was like dreaming and dreaming was like creating.
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The swots call it "hypnagogic", the more commercial-minded are calling it "sugary mutant pop".
Outer Limits Recordings (No 904) Paul Lester 2010
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The swots call it "hypnagogic", the more commercial-minded are calling it "sugary mutant pop".
rolig commented on the word hypnagogic
The preferred spelling, according to Wordie's resident etymologist Qroqqa. See note at that second-rate o-heavy spelling hypnogogic.
September 8, 2008
darqueau commented on the word hypnagogic
I insist on the fact that the drawings thus obtained lost more and more, through a series of suggestions and transmutations that offered themselves spontaneously - in the manner of that which passes for hypnagogic visions - the character of the material interrogated (the wood, for example) and took on the aspect of images of an unhoped for precision, probably of a sort which revealed the first cause of the obsession, or produced a simulacrum of that cause.
Max Ernst "On Frottage" 1936
October 20, 2008