different between slumber vs slumberer

English

Alternative forms

• slumbre (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English slombren, slomren, frequentative of Middle English slummen, slumen (“to doze”), probably from Middle English slume (“slumber”), from Old English sl?ma, from Proto-Germanic *sl?m- (“slack, loose, limp, flabby”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)lew- (“loose, limp, flabby”), equivalent to sloom +? -er. Cognate with West Frisian slommerje, slûmerje (“to slumber”), Dutch sluimeren (“to slumber”), German schlummern (“to slumber, doze”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /sl?mb?/
• (General American) enPR: sl?m?b?r, IPA^(key): /?sl?mb?/
• Rhymes: -?mb?(?)
• Hyphenation: slum?ber

Noun

slumber (plural slumbers)

1. A very light state of sleep, almost awake.

   • He at last fell into a slumber, and thence into a fast sleep, which detained him in that place until it was almost night.

   • 1665, John Dryden, The Indian Emperour

     Rest to my soul, and slumber to my eyes.

2. (figuratively) A state of ignorance or inaction.
   • 2009, Ben-Ami Scharfstein, Art without borders: a philosophical exploration of art and humanity

     Marcel Duchamp's urinal and readymades seemed in the beginning to be insider jokes or jokelike paradoxes meant to awaken people from their aesthetic slumbers.

Derived terms

• slumbercoach, slumber coach
• slumberlike

Translations

Verb

slumber (third-person singular simple present slumbers, present participle slumbering, simple past and past participle slumbered)

1. (intransitive) To be in a very light state of sleep, almost awake.

   • He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

2. (intransitive) To be inactive or negligent.
3. (transitive, obsolete) To lay to sleep.
   • 1642, Henry Wotton, A Short View of the Life and Death of George Villers, Duke of Buckingham

     slumber his conscience

4. (transitive, obsolete) To stun; to stupefy.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Spenser to this entry?)

Translations

See also

• catnap
• doze
• nap
• shuteye
• slumber party

Anagrams

• Blumers, Bulmers, Burslem, Rumbles, lumbers, rumbles, slumbre, umbrels

English

Etymology

slumber +? -er

Noun

slumberer (plural slumberers)

1. One who slumbers; a sleeper.
   • 1633, John Donne, The Progress of the Soul. Metempsychosis, in John Carey (ed.) John Donne: The Major Works, Oxford University Press, 1990, First Song, Stanza XV, 141-6, p. 75, [1]

     His right arm he thrust out towards the east, / Westward his left; th' ends did themselves digest / Into ten lesser strings, these fingers were: / And as a slumberer stretching on his bed, / This way he this, and that way scattered / His other leg, which feet with toes upbear;

   • 1955, Martin Buber, The Legend of the Baal-Shem, translated by Maurice Friedman, London: Routledge, 2002, p. 148,

     There lay the houses in the dawn light with closed window-shutters, like joyless slumberers with heavy lids.

Anagrams

• lumberers