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Soporific comes from Latin sopor, which means "deep sleep." That root is related to somnus, the Latin word for "sleep." Despite its meaning, somnus has been active, giving English somnolence (sleepiness), somnambulism (sleepwalking), and many other "sleepy" words.
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Examples of soporific in a Sentence
Victor Mather, New York Times, 22 Sep. 2023
Presumably filmed as an educational video on the Alexander Technique, a method of posture and movement coaching, the video has all the soporific features of a winning ASMR video.
—Eliza Brooke, New York Times, 4 July 2023
The air is radiant with orange blossom; you are invited to crush geranium leaves in your hands, or to flutter your fingers through a purple haze of lavender and inhale the soporific scent.
—April Long, Town & Country, 22 June 2023
This bedtime hormone isn’t a soporific (sleep inducer) but a part of the circadian rhythm, a person’s internal biological clock that’s tuned in to the sleep-wake cycle.
—Elana Spivack, Scientific American, 5 May 2023
But that was not the case this year, which proved more soporific than Ambien.
—Jonathan M. Gitlin, Ars Technica, 1 May 2023
Only the library had survived the friars’ long sleep, though barely; even its soporific dust, felled by time, failed to fly up.
—Cynthia Ozick, Harper’s Magazine , 10 Apr. 2023
Part of the thrill is the proximity of beauty to danger, fragility to force; Rittson-Thomas likewise covers the ground of her orchard in the Cotswolds with blood-red common poppies, cousins to the powerful opium poppy, which carry their own soporific tinge.
—Ligaya Mishan, New York Times, 27 Aug. 2020
The Late Late Show is still soporific.
—Vulture, 30 Sep. 2022
Walter Shapiro, The New Republic, 15 Oct. 2020
The filmmakers hit the reset button again, to find new conflict-laden places to go, new soporific curses to do.
—BostonGlobe.com, 17 Oct. 2019
And education’s soporific wonkitude works in its favor: Negotiations fly under the radar.
—Roger Sollenberger, The New Republic, 5 Aug. 2019
Norton, who has already completed the 12-hour sleep-coaching program with his own Tier X trainer, takes me up to the hotel’s penthouse suite to watch the sunset over the Hudson and sample a line of soporific CBD chocolates.
—Howie Kahn, WSJ, 27 Mar. 2019
Like at night, when the soft beds and gentle rhythms of the train become a potent soporific.
—Jo Rodgers, Condé Nast Traveler, 7 Sep. 2018
After a soporific first 45 minutes ended scoreless, more than 40,000 spectators at the Rostov Arena had little reason to expect the remarkable, rollicking second half that awaited them.
—Tariq Panja, New York Times, 4 July 2018
This never made sense anyway, though for the gullible few, inflamed rhetoric has apparently served as an effective soporific.
—Thomas Jewell, cleveland.com, 3 Jan. 2018
The flow is further evident in the variety of tracks, which span the gamut from lush deep house rhythms to soporific electronica and ambient compositions.
—Michael Sundius, Billboard, 30 Oct. 2017
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These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'soporific.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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“Soporific.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/soporific. Accessed 11 Dec. 2023.
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Medical Definition
soporific
1 of 2 adjective
soporific
2 of 2 noun
More from Merriam-Webster on soporific
Nglish: Translation of soporific for Spanish Speakers
Britannica English: Translation of soporific for Arabic Speakers
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