different between sleepwalker vs somnambulist

English

Alternative forms

• sleep-walker

Etymology

sleep +? walker

Noun

sleepwalker (plural sleepwalkers)

1. Someone who walks about in their sleep.

Synonyms

• somnambulist

Translations

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French somnambuliste, from Medieval Latin somnambulus (“sleepwalker”), from Latin somnus (“sleep”) + ambul? (“to walk”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): [s?m?næmbj?l?st]

Noun

somnambulist (plural somnambulists)

1. A person who walks about in his or her sleep; a sleepwalker.
   • 1977, William Weaver (translator), Italo Calvino (author), The Castle of Crossed Destinies (first published 1969), part 2, chapter 5, 1969

     He must have promptly rejected an alternative explanation which would better fulfill the demands of verisimilitude (“My wife, poor thing, in her nervous condition, now is afflicted also with sleepwalking!”), seeing the laborious tasks to which the resumed somnambulist devotes herself: kneeling at the edge of a pit, she anoints the earth with murky philters (unless the implements she holds in her hand are to be interpreted actually as acetylene torches scattering sparks, to melt the lead seals of a coffin).

Related terms

• somnambulate
• somnambulistic

Translations

Anagrams

• immunoblasts

Romanian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [som.nam.bu?list]

Noun

somnambulist m (plural somnambuli?ti)

1. somnambulist

Synonyms

• noctambul
• somnambul