soporific

adjective sop·o·rif·ic \ ˌsä-pə-ˈri-fik \

|Updated on: 12 Jul 2018

Examples: soporific in a Sentence

Editor's Note: Did You Know?

Definition of soporific

1 a : causing or tending to cause sleep

soporific drugs

b : tending to dull awareness or alertness

2 : of, relating to, or marked by sleepiness or lethargy

See soporific defined for English-language learners

soporific was our Word of the Day on 11/30/2016. Hear the podcast!

Examples of soporific in a Sentence

the soporific heat of summer
this medication is soporific, so do not drive after taking it

Recent Examples of soporific from the Web

Or, rather, the pseudo-activity of a free-market model, which keeps people soporific?

— peter pomerantsev, New York Times, "What Trained Bears Can Teach Us About Formerly Authoritarian Countries," 3 May 2018
Shows like Forensic Files and The New Detectives covered one case (or sometimes more) per episode, relying on stagey re-enactments and soporific interviews with local law enforcement to sketch out the rough outlines of a murder or a disappearance.

— rachel syme, The New Republic, "How The Staircase Defined True Crime Series," 11 June 2018
Playwright Ayad Akhtar’s script keeps things moving, never getting too bogged down in the financial flimflammery to lose audiences — a neat trick given the occasionally soporific nature of high finance to anyone who’s not an account.

— constance grady, Vox, "Your guide to the 17 most important nominees at this year’s Tonys," 7 June 2018
Disjointed and direct, exhilarating and soporific, cerebral and squirrelly: The Image Book is lots of contradictory things at once.

— stephanie zacharek, Time, "Cannes Review: Jean-Luc Godard's The Image Book Confounds and Dazzles," 14 May 2018
To avoid muddying the texture, pianists rely on a clean, detached style, and as a result the music too often sounds subdued, fastidious, even soporific.

— alex ross, The New Yorker, "The Rebel Harpsichordists," 14 May 2018
Three goals in the final 15 minutes put a gloss on a largely soporific performance at a well-below capacity Emirates Stadium.

— afp, chicagotribune.com, "Aubameyang brace leads late Arsenal win over Stoke," 1 Apr. 2018
And at a time when politics seems to be downright histrionic in many parts of the world, Germany’s election campaign has felt surprisingly soporific.

— yascha mounk, Slate Magazine, "You Snooze, She Wins," 13 Sep. 2017
The once-soporific Uzbek media was allowed to explore some topics previously considered taboo.

— yaroslav trofimov, WSJ, "In Uzbekistan, Signs of a Thaw After Decades of Repression," 14 Sep. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'soporific.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

"It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is 'soporific.' I have never felt sleepy after eating lettuces; but then I am not a rabbit." In The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies by Beatrix Potter, the children of Benjamin Bunny were very nearly done in by Mr. McGregor because they ate soporific lettuces that put them into a deep sleep. Their near fate can help you recall the history of soporific. The term traces to the Latin noun sopor, which means "deep sleep." (That root is related to somnus, the Latin word for sleep and the name of the Roman god of sleep.) French speakers used sopor as the basis of soporifique, which was probably the model for the English soporific.