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Drowsiness   /drˈaʊzinəs/   Listen
Drowsiness

noun
1.
A very sleepy state.  Synonyms: sleepiness, somnolence.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Drowsiness" Quotes from Famous Books



... motor boat, the boy had passed through thirty-six hours of the most trying excitement, since his departure from Millot the morning of the day before. The food was good and plentiful, and when Stuart had stowed away all he could hold, drowsiness came over him, and his ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... face, for which he has used a variety of remedies with no very beneficial effect, has lately applied the fumes of chalk and oil of vitriol to the parts affected. The operation occasions great itching and pricking in the skin, and some degree of drowsiness, but evidently abates the serous discharge, and diminishes the eruption. This patient has several symptoms which indicate a genuine scorbutic DIATHESIS; and it is probable that fixed air, taken internally, would be an useful medicine in ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley

... conscious of fatigue. He had always been a wiry, indefatigable person, and the alarms and emotions of this night had cleared his head of its wines and drowsiness. He felt the sense of tense, highstrung power which came to him in war, in fighting, in ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... chosen for a private conference. The morning drum had just been beaten; everyone shook off the drowsiness of night, and to dispel the humid morning air, came to take a drop at the inn. Dragoons, Swiss, Guardsmen, Musketeers, light-horsemen, succeeded one another with a rapidity which might answer the purpose of the host very well, but agreed ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... I read it, then sat pondering. He sighed with pain, pushed all aside and presently bade the secretary forth. When the man was gone he told me of an agony behind his eyes that now stabbed and now laid him in a drowsiness. I did what I could for him then waited until the access was over. It passed, and ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... sleeping run the danger of death. I see it is true that the wise man saith, "Two are better than one." Hitherto hath thy company been my mercy, and thou shalt have a good reward for thy labour. (Eccl. 4:9). CHR. Now then, said Christian, to prevent drowsiness in this place, let us fall ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... there were curious looks bestowed upon them Hollister was too engrossed to care and the girl, of course, could not see those sidelong, unspoken inquiries. After dinner they found chairs in the same deck saloon and continued their conversation until ten o'clock, when drowsiness born of a slow, rolling motion of the vessel drove ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... of earth is ceasing never: On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The cricket's song, in the warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... In the effort to avoid falling under the influence of these wearisome hallucinations, I strove to prevent myself from being overcome by sleep. I held my eyelids open with my fingers, and stood for hours together leaning upright against the wall, fighting sleep with all my might; but the dust of drowsiness invariably gathered upon my eyes at last, and finding all resistance useless, I would have to let my arms fall in the extremity of despairing weariness, and the current of slumber would again bear ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier

... there a drowsiness stole over him which he made no effort to resist. In a few minutes the world of sight and sound was blotted out, and he slept. He awakened with a start and looked around. Then he glanced at his watch and found that it was four o'clock, and that he must have been ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody

... their sleep, as long as this season lasts, to about three hours and an half a night, upon a moderate computation[062]. Those who can keep their eyes open during their nightly labour, and are willing to resist the drowsiness that is continually coming upon them, are presently worn out; while some of those, who are overcome, and who feed the mill between asleep and awake, suffer, for thus obeying the calls of nature, by the loss of a limb[063]. In this manner they go on, with little or no respite from their work, ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson

... me I will show you a better one.' He conducted me to the Crooked Billet, in Water Street. There I ordered something for dinner, and during my meal a number of curious questions were put to me, my youth and appearance exciting the suspicion of my being a young runaway. After dinner my drowsiness returned, and I threw myself upon a bed without taking off my clothes, and slept till six o'clock in the evening, when I was called to supper. I afterward went to bed at a very early hour, and did not awake ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth

... being hypnotized by me. I cannot say whether a really deep hypnotic state was produced at once as I refrained from testing it. There was certainly no amnesia. Probably it began only with a slight drowsiness but at the fifth treatment I found a relatively deep hypnosis. It was a capricious case in which the improvement was fluctuating but clearly setting in from the first day. I trained her in hearing and ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... what had happened. And the smile seemed reflected in the radiant countenance of the big, round moon mounting slowly in the heavens. She appeared to beam approval upon him and upon the precious burden he supported. But with the drowsiness which soon came stealing over him he saw—or dreamed he saw—out in the glistening path of light between the moon and him, not far from where he sat, an object like a human face, upturned, moving gently with the waves. And mingling among the quivering moonbeams around the head was a silvery ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell

... down on the log of a tree, that lay outside the hut, and leaned against its wall. For two hours he sat, and thought over the adventures and the prospects of the war, and then gradually a drowsiness crept over him, and he ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... while on horseback. Dr. Kidd used to tell us that the wrist, the eyelid, and the nape of the neck went to sleep before the brain—a charitable excuse for one who drops a Prayer Book in church from drowsiness. I wish I could get Dr. Kidd to tell me whether the knee does not (at least by habit) remain awake after the brain is asleep, for I never saw the Tartar loose in the saddle even when he was all nidnodding." Then comes again the suggestion of the doubt which beset Newman that the way in which ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... Wright, weary with the toils of the day, and feeling comfortable and cosy in her big armchair by the lire, knitted peacefully till, drowsiness overtaking her, she laid back her head and closed her eyes. The wood crackled cheerily in the great chimney, the faint murmur of the sea made the old lady still more sleepy, and in a few minutes ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... find itself equally at odds with the evils of society, and with the projects that are offered to relieve them. The wise skeptic is a bad citizen; no conservative; he sees the selfishness of property, and the drowsiness of institutions. But neither is he fit to work with any democratic party that ever was constituted; for parties wish every one committed, and he penetrates the popular patriotism. His politics are those of the "Soul's ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... now in the ease of security. His advent not having been expected there could be no plot against him in existence. Drowsiness stole upon his senses. He enjoyed it, but keeping a hold, so he thought at least, on his wits; but he must have been gone further than he thought because he was startled beyond measure by a fiendish uproar. He had never heard anything so pitilessly ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... HABIT, who are subject to headache, giddiness, drowsiness, and singing in the ears, arising from too great a flow of blood to the head, should never be without them, as many dangerous symptoms will be entirely carried off by their timely use; and for elderly people, where an occasional aperient is required, ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli

... automatically correcting sums, copies, exercises, because the sight of the pencilled words or figures steadied her faculties, whereas she felt that if she called the children up in class her wits would wander and all answers come alike to her, right or wrong. Her will, too, had fallen into a strange drowsiness. She wanted the window open, to get rid of the humble-bees; a word to one of the elder boys and it would be done. Yet the minutes passed and the word remained unspoken. So a sick man will lie and debate with himself so small a thing as ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... represented fasces. He wore pyjamas which sorrowfully misbecame his bulk; his nose was hooked and cruel, his body overcome with sodden corpulence, his eye timorous and dull; he seemed at once oppressed with drowsiness and held awake by apprehension: a pepper rajah muddled with opium, and listening for the march of the Dutch army, looks perhaps not otherwise. We were to grow better acquainted, and first and last I had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sleep," he told himself grimly as he stretched out. He lay there, watching, while the moonlight faded, while a gray streak in the east slowly widened, presaging the dawn. Stretched flat, his aching muscles welcoming the support of the cool stone of the ledge, he had to fight off the drowsiness that assailed him. ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... twenty minutes; he awoke faint with drowsiness, tingling from head to toe from fatigue, and in distress of a queer qualm in the pit of his stomach, to find the hansom at rest and the driver on the step, shaking his fare with kindly determination. "Oh, a' right," he assented ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... I could be a man, I resolved to utter no sound as long as Dominic himself had the force to keep his lips closed. Nothing but silence becomes certain situations. Moreover, the experience of treachery seemed to spread a hopeless drowsiness over my thoughts and senses. For an hour or more we watched our pursuer surging out nearer and nearer from amongst the squalls that sometimes hid her altogether. But even when not seen, we felt her there like a knife at our throats. She gained on us frightfully. And the Tremolino, in a fierce breeze ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... as though in an imperceptible hailstorm. He saw a cannon lying on its side with the wheels broken and turned over among many men who appeared asleep; he saw soldiers who stretched themselves out without a contraction, without a sound, as though overcome by sudden drowsiness. Others were howling and dragging themselves forward in ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... the, tree, and in. a panic simply bundled Coleman upon his feet before he was awake. He stuttered out his tale, and the dazed, correspondent heard it punctuated by the steady trample of the retiring cavalry. The dragoman saw a man's face then turn in a flash from an expression of luxurious drowsiness to an expression of utter malignancy. However, he was in too much of a hurry to be afraid of it; he ran off to the little grey horse and frenziedly but skilfully began to bind the traps upon the packsaddle. He appeared in a moment tugging at the halter. He could ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... jealousy of Mademoiselle Viefville was Nanny's greatest weakness, and drawing the old woman to her, she entwined her arms around her neck and complained of drowsiness. Accustomed to watching, and really unable to sleep, the nurse now passed a perfectly happy hour in holding her child, who literally dropped asleep on her bosom; after which Nanny slid into the berth beneath, in her clothes, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... passed over a crossing of cobble-stones; as if the bells of the churches rang with a deliberate purpose, to welcome or rejoice over some event . . . some entry of a king, she fancied, in a far-off city. Once even, so deep grew her drowsiness, she fancied herself looking down on some such city, herself up in the sunlight and air, floating on the cloudy vessel of her ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... he was conscious of great lightness and freedom, too great lightness, in fact; he seemed, as it were, unconscious of his body, as though he were floating and at the same time shudders ran down him, a sort of agreeable weakness crept over his legs, and his lips and eyelids tingled with drowsiness. He had no desire now, no thought of anything ... only he was wonderfully at ease, as though someone were lulling him, "singing him to bye-bye," as Emilie had expressed it, and he whispered to himself, "little ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... spirit into other spirits, in giving them my suffering as the food and consolation for their sufferings, in awakening their unrest with my unrest, in sharpening their hunger for God with my hunger for God. It is not charity to rock and lull our brothers to sleep in the inertia and drowsiness of matter, but rather to awaken them to the uneasiness and torment ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... CHLORINE, CYANOGEN, HYDROSULPHURIC ACID, ETC.—Symptoms: Great drowsiness, difficult respiration, features swollen, face blue as in strangulation.—Treatment: Artificial respirations, cold douche, frictions with stimulating substances to the surface of the body. Inhalation of steam containing preparations of ammonia. ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... melancholy expression. By his lofty brow, his classic profile, his aquiline nose, he was at once recognized as a prince of the great race of Bourbon. He had all the characteristic traits of his ancestors except their penetrating glance; his eyes seemed red from weeping, and veiled with a perpetual drowsiness; and the weakness of his vision gave him ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny

... among a crowd of witnesses and tired lawyers. The law's delay seemed to steep the big room with drowsiness; the air was warm and breathed in and out a thousand times by a hundred lungs. Myra looked about her at the weary, listless audience. Then she looked at Joe. He had fallen fast asleep, his head hanging ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... him, showing signs of drowsiness. The door Right bursts open. STERLING quickly hides the letter in his inside pocket as WARDEN ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch

... thus: "February 15th, 188-. The undersigned, in pursuance of an order, No. 638, of the Medical Department," began the secretary with resolution, raising the pitch of his voice, as if to dispel the drowsiness that seized upon every one present, "and in the presence of the assistant medical director, examined the ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... stimulant and therefore it was forbidden to followers of Islam.[34] But its power to prevent drowsiness and sleep during the intolerably long religious exercises was a winning feature, and so its use became general in spite ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... its enervating heat, its piercing light, was the time, so Hugh thought, for reflection. In winter the mind is often sunk in a sort of comfortable drowsiness, and hybernates within its secure cell. Hugh found the activities of work very absorbing in those darker days: his thoughts took on a more placid, more contented tinge. Early in the year he walked alone along the Backs at Cambridge. He passed the great romantic gateposts of St. John's, with the elms ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... remembered to have written out, thinking them his own, in an old manuscript book he had left at home. "At-home!" ... Where was that? It must be a very long way off! ... He half-closed his eyes,—a sense of delightful drowsiness was upon him, . . the rise and fall of his friend's rhythmic utterance soothed him into a languid peace, . . the "Idyl of Roses" was very sweet and musical, and, though he knew it of old, he heard it now with special satisfaction, inasmuch as, it being no longer his, he was ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... of drowsiness continued till daybreak. She woke bathed in blood, completely exhausted, but yet with a sensation of comfort which convinced her that she had been delivered from her burden. Her first words were about her child; she wished to see it, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... through the still darksome forest, and, an hour after leaving the pagoda, had crossed a vast plain. They made a halt at seven o'clock, the young woman being still in a state of complete prostration. The guide made her drink a little brandy and water, but the drowsiness which stupefied her could not yet be shaken off. Sir Francis, who was familiar with the effects of the intoxication produced by the fumes of hemp, reassured his companions on her account. But he was more disturbed at the prospect of ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne

... drowsiness crept over me; and a little later I had an odd sense of perfect quietude. I was lying amid moss and violets. In a languorous way I wondered how my surroundings had changed, and at last I awoke to find my head propped ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... on in the khaki hammock in a happy drowsiness. The wind and sunshine alone were enough to make her happy. And there was going to be a dance to-night, and she could wear a little pink dress she remembered . . . and pretty soon there would be luncheon, and after that she was going off on a gorgeous expedition with ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer

... his eyes and one might have fancied that he slept, yet every now and then his eyelids would lift, and his eyes, unveiled by drowsiness, would fix themselves on some point in the room with the intent gaze of a person who is listening; so in the forest, or on the plain, or by the cane brake had he often listened at night, motionless, gun in hand and deadly, for the ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... view of all these things, the president again conversed with them about the eternal rest from labor, into which the blessed and happy enter after death, and said, "Eternal rest is not inactivity; for inactivity occasions a thorough languor, dulness, stupor, and drowsiness of the mind and thence of the body; and these things are death and not life, still less eternal life which the angels of heaven enjoy; therefore eternal rest is that which dispels such mischiefs, and causes a man to ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... god of the Hawaiian pantheon, in company with other immortals, his boon companions, met in revelry on the heights bounding Wai-pi'o valley. With each potation of awa they sounded a blast upon their conch-shells, and the racket was almost continuous from the setting of the sun until drowsiness overcame them or the coming of day put an end to ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... have fine work now," she said, "and shall probably have to resort to cold water. Really, if Susy proves too hard to wake, I shall let her sleep on—her drowsiness ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade

... his food, while on the other hand, he had recourse more frequently to wine, drinking off bumpers with greedy avidity, until, yielding at length to the excess of his potations, he fell fast asleep in the arm chair he had drawn to the fire, overcome by the mingled influence of wine, fatigue, and drowsiness. ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... By and by a drowsiness overcame him, and Venters began to nod, half asleep, with his back against a spruce. Rousing himself and calling Whitie, he went to the cave. The girl lay barely visible in the dimness. Ring crouched beside her, and the patting of his tail on the stone ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... bedraggled figure in a shawl, with a big paper parcel under her arm, shuffles noiselessly by and disappears down an adjacent turning. Then there is another long interval, interrupted by a pretentious clock sonorously sounding two. A feeling of drowsiness creeps over me; my eyelids droop. I begin to lose cognisance of my surroundings and to imagine myself in some far-away place, when I am recalled sharply to myself by an intensely cold current of air. Intuitively I recognise the superphysical; it is the same species of cold which ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... induce this, I would recommend a walk in the evening before going to bed, covering several miles. Although walking for health should ordinarily be brisk enough to stimulate breathing and arouse an active circulation, thus strengthening the internal organs, for the purpose of promoting drowsiness the last mile or two of the evening walk should preferably be very slow. Fast movements are stimulating to mind and nerves. Slow movements have a sedative effect. By walking very slowly as if one were tired the desired effect of fatigue is more satisfactorily ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden

... consider her ways, and be wise." Poverty, says the preacher, shall come upon the idler, "as one that traveleth, and want as an armed man;" but of the industrious and upright, "the hand of the diligent maketh rich." "the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty; and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags." "Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings." But above all, "It is better to get wisdom than gold; for wisdom is better than rubies, and all the things that may be desired are not ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... three men in the control room felt the unmistakable, jarring tingle of an electric shock. And while their nerves still jumped, it came again; and again. They were conscious of a slight feeling of drowsiness. ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... a toothache, neither of them very deadly ailments, create pain out of all proportion to their gravity. And if we take the case of excessive cold we have here an instance where instead of pain acting as a warning, the danger just acts as an anaesthetic. The victim is oppressed by drowsiness, sinks into insensibility, finally death. Here it is not the approach of death that is painful, but the return to life, the pain of restoring circulation being very ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... would lie for an instant upon her cheek, when immediately she would open her eyes very wide, and look furtively about to see if her drowsiness were detected. ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks

... over we carefully washed and put away the utensils and food ready for the morning, and after visiting the horses, settled ourselves in our respective positions for the night, lit pipes, spun yarns, or sang songs, till drowsiness claimed us, and we disappeared under our blankets with our saddles for pillows and slept only as those who lead the life ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth

... himself up by convincing him that he ought not to have taken the boat back to the island. Harry said nothing; but he was wondering whether he would freeze to death in the fog, and tried to remember how travellers overtaken by the snow on the Alps contrive to fight off the terrible drowsiness that steals over them when they are freezing. Tom was more practical. He did not expect to freeze in July, although he was miserably cold; and he did not want to punish Jim for a mistake of judgment. He knew that the house where they were accustomed ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... grasshoppers, hidden in the long yellow sedge-grass and drouth-smitten corn, pierced the stillness now and then with a suddenness startling each time it broke forth, because the interval between each of the pipings was given by the hearers to drowsiness or ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... first time, made aware that my acclimatization in the ague-breeding swamps of Arkansas was powerless against the mukunguru of East Africa. The premonitory symptoms of the African type were felt in my system at 10 A.M. First, general lassitude prevailed, with a disposition to drowsiness; secondly, came the spinal ache which, commencing from the loins, ascended the vertebrae, and extended around the ribs, until it reached the shoulders, where it settled into a weary pain; thirdly came a chilliness ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... the equator, it was enough for him to give an order to rouse things and beings from their brutish drowsiness. "Let the music begin, and refreshments be served." And in a few moments dancers would be revolving the whole length of the deck, and smiling lips and eyes would become brilliantly alight with illusion and ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... white, sand-hills in a crescent of low, white houses pierced by green minarets and royal palms. A warm sun had sent the world to sleep at mid-day, and an enforced peace hung over the glaring white town and the sparkling blue sea. Gordon blinked at the glare, but his eyes showed no signs of drowsiness. They were, on the contrary, awake to all that passed on the high road behind him, and on the sandy beach at his feet, while at the same time his mind was busily occupied in reviewing what had occurred the day before, and in adjusting ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis

... stole over her, drowsiness tugged at her eyelids. But, just as she was dozing off, she was roused by someone's entering the room, bending ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... the bowl, and, to Jim's unbounded amazement, hung suspended over it, without mingling with the air of the room, as he had expected it would. At the same time a delightful odour greeted his nostrils, and he began to experience a delicious sensation of drowsiness stealing over him, while to his ears there seemed to come a faint sound as of music being played at a distance. The outlines of the room began to vanish and fade away, little by little, until the only thing that remained before his eyes was the column, or rather ball, ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood

... the click, click, click of the wheels—our sweet lullaby apparently this had become—was wanting; and then the telegrams from home, which bade us Godspeed, the warm, balmy air of Italy, when we had left winter behind—all this drove sleep away; and when drowsiness came, what apparitions of Japanese, Chinese, Indians, elephants, camels, josses! passed through our brain in endless procession. We were at the Golden Gate; we had just reached the edge of the Pacific Ocean, and ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... she expressed a longing for sleep. It seemed to her excited imagination that she would never be able to sleep again, yet her limbs were scarcely composed in comfort on a litter of coarse grass and parched seaweed than her eyes closed in the drowsiness of sheer exhaustion. This respite was altogether helpful. She had slept but little during the gale, and its tremendous climax had surprised her vitality at ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... is selected as the hour for the attack because sleep is then thought to be soundest and the drowsiness and sluggishness following the awakening to be greater. Moreover, at that time there is sufficient light to enable the attacking party to see their opponents whether they fight ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... Oxford, the other day, about that; and he said that such tales be but doltish dreams and old wives' fables. But the true mandrake is a clean and wholesome plant. The true ointment Populeon should have the juice of the leaves in it; and the root boiled and strained causes drowsiness. It hath a predominate cold faculty, Galen saith; but its true home is not in England at all. It comes ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... their sleeping-rooms. Straightway uncovering the hidden heap of weapons, each girded on his arms silently and then went to the palace. Bursting into its recesses, they drew their swords upon the sleeping figures. Many awoke; but, invaded as much by the sudden and dreadful carnage as by the drowsiness of sleep, they faltered in their resistance; for the night misled them and made it doubtful whether those they met were friends or foes. Hjalte, who was foremost in tried bravery among the nobles of the king, chanced to have gone out in the dead of that same night into the country ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... among the pine-trees; And he felt upon his forehead Blows of little airy war-clubs, Wielded by the slumbrous legions Of the Spirit of Sleep, Nepahwin, As of some one breathing on him. At the first blow of their war-clubs, Fell a drowsiness on Kwasind; At the second blow they smote him, Motionless his paddle rested; At the third, before his vision Reeled the landscape into darkness, Very sound asleep was Kwasind. So he floated down the river, Like a blind man seated upright, Floated down the Taquamenaw, Underneath ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... head was nodding with drowsiness. I must pull myself together. I decided I would have some black coffee, and I raised my eyes to find the waiter. They fell upon the pale face and elegant figure of the one-armed officer I had met at the Casino at Goch ... the young lieutenant they ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... dread it as much as we had the previous one, except that the sky being clear, there was more light to enable us to avoid any danger in our course. We took a frugal supper and a cup of cold water, all we dared consume of our scanty stores. Drowsiness now began to overcome most of us. I felt myself capable of keeping awake better than any of the rest, for I saw that even La Motte was giving way. I therefore urged him to let me take the helm while he lay down. To this he consented. Andrews and I wrapped him ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... plague of my dwelling, which I hoped would be so peaceful!—the Athenians, they say, used to hang you up in a little cage, the better to enjoy your song. One were well enough, during the drowsiness of digestion; but hundreds, roaring all at once, assaulting the hearing until thought recoils—this indeed is torture! You put forward, as excuse, your rights as the first occupant. Before my arrival the two plane-trees ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... him out of the apartment with a sounding smack between the shoulders. Tryphena hesitated to send the mad woman into the room in which Serlizer was sleeping, not knowing the nature of their relations at the Select Encampment. Matilda, however, evidenced no intention of retiring, or feeling of drowsiness. She talked, with the brightness and cheerfulness of other days, and in a gentle, pleasant voice, but on strange wild themes that terrified the two young women. Monty looked at the fire and then at Tryphosa, saying: "I ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... to undue repose, it is sloth: and of sorrow he says that it gives rise to "spite, faint-heartedness, bitterness, despair," whereas he states that from sloth seven things arise, viz. "idleness, drowsiness, uneasiness of the mind, restlessness of the body, instability, loquacity, curiosity." Therefore it seems that either Gregory or Isidore has wrongly assigned sloth as a capital sin together ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... preliminary arrangements. Heubner also took leave of us, and went to refresh his tired brain by an hour's sleep. I was left alone on the sofa with Bakunin, who soon fell towards me, overcome by irresistible drowsiness, and dropped the terrific weight of his head on to my shoulder. As I saw that he would not wake if I shook off this burden, I pushed him aside with some difficulty, and took leave both of the sleeper and of Heubner's house; for I wished to see for myself, as ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... Gilgamish, "Now as touching thyself; which of the gods will gather thee to himself so that thou mayest find the life which thou seekest? Come now, do not lay thyself down to sleep for six days and seven nights." But in spite of this admonition as soon as Gilgamish had sat down, drowsiness overpowered him and he fell fast asleep. Uta-Napishtim, seeing that even the mighty hero Gilgamish could not resist falling asleep, with some amusement drew the attention of his wife to the fact, but she felt sorry for the tired ...
— The Babylonian Story of the Deluge - as Told by Assyrian Tablets from Nineveh • E. A. Wallis Budge

... day, and as I rode widershins round yon hill, a deep drowsiness fell upon me, and when I awoke, behold! I was in Elfland. Fair is that land and gay, and fain would I stop but for thee and one other thing. Every seven years the Elves pay their tithe to the Nether world, and for all the Queen makes much of me, I fear it is myself ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various

... Miranda does not perceive the working of her father's art upon herself. For, when he casts a spell of drowsiness over her, so that she cannot choose but sleep, on being awaked by him she tells him, "The strangeness of your story put heaviness in me." So his art conceals itself in its very potency of operation; and seems the more like nature for being preternatural. It is another noteworthy point, that while ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... They flourish their tails, snarl, bite, squeak, and swallow the whole time of their meal; and if kindly treated, will come and warm themselves by the fires of the hunters when they are asleep, and sit nodding their own heads with drowsiness. ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... last dish been removed than a deathlike stillness falls upon the house: it is the time of the after-dinner siesta. The young folks go into the garden, and all the other members of the household give way to the drowsiness naturally engendered by a heavy meal on a hot summer day. Ivan Ivan'itch retires to his own room, from which the flies have been carefully expelled. Maria Petrovna dozes in an arm-chair in the sitting-room, with a pocket-handkerchief spread over her ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... a child's feeble voice, and in an instant she pressed on towards the spot from which the sound came; soon she heard Fly's loud howl for aid. At last she reached the spot, and found a little boy half asleep, a kind of drowsiness which precedes death. He could not speak; he could only moan. She moistened his lips with the gin, and poured a little down his throat. She then raised him up and carried him a short distance down the hill; ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"

... the observation car, apparently asleep in a chair. Katherine, who entered first, declared afterwards that she was positive she saw him close his eyes like a flash and lapse into an appearance of drowsiness, but if she was not in error, his subsequent manner was a very clever simulation of midday slumber. Three or four times in the course of the next hour he shifted his position and half opened his eyes, but drooped back quickly into the most comfortable ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis

... there for some time, a certain amount of carbohydrate may be cautiously allowed, the consequent effect on the glycosuria being estimated. The best diet can only be worked out experimentally for each individual patient. But in every case, if drowsiness or any symptom suggesting coma supervene, all restrictions must be withdrawn, and carbohydrate freely allowed. The question of alcohol is one which must be largely determined by the previous history of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... in the head, and suffering from a brain fever. For a time he uttered fearful shrieks, but on the third day he sank into a state of drowsiness, and his life seemed to hang upon a thread: that it might snap, the physician said, was the best that could ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... for March. He burst into a fit of laughter, which called the rusty hinges into violent action and produced a groan. The laugh and the groan together banished drowsiness, so he turned ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... trying to feel interested in the conversation; but the day had been a long one, and he had undergone an unusual amount of fatigue. Gradually, his drowsiness increased. The many voices fell upon his ears like a lullaby, and in a few minutes he ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger

... to breathe the fresh air. Before long the sensation of drowsiness returned; I slept again for hours together. My friend, the physician, would no doubt have attributed this prolonged need of repose to the exhausted condition of my brain, previously excited by delusions which had lasted uninterruptedly for many hours together. Let ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... the idle and light-hearted youths of dreamy Italy are accustomed to do, when they lie down in the first convenient shade, and snatch a noonday slumber. A stupor was upon him, which he mistook for such drowsiness as he had known in his innocent past life. But, by and by, he raised himself slowly and left the garden. Sometimes poor Donatello started, as if he heard a shriek; sometimes he shrank back, as if a face, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... impossible after all that I have heard, so, after vainly endeavoring to follow the example of the rest, and sleep like a Stoic, I have lighted my candle and take to this to induce drowsiness. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... and not be able to sleep for a week afterwards, he was now going to bed. He shook hands with Mrs. Westangle for good-night. The latest to follow him was Verrian, who, strangely alert, and as far from drowsiness as he had ever known himself, was yet more roused by realizing that Mrs. Westangle was not letting his hand go at once, but, unless it was mere absent-mindedness, was conveying through it the wish to keep him. She fluttered a little more closely up to him, and twittered out, "Miss ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... disposable force under the Duke of Wellington was collected together, but in such haste, that many of the officers had not time to change their silk stockings and dancing shoes; and some, quite overcome by drowsiness, were seen lying asleep about the ramparts, still holding, however, with a firm hand, the reins of their horses which were grazing by their sides. About five o'clock, the word "march" was heard in all directions, and instantly the whole mass appeared to move simultaneously. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various

... eaten,—until the eater desires no more. And the people of Horai drink their wine out of very, very small cups; but no man can empty one of those cups,—however stoutly he may drink,—until there comes upon him the pleasant drowsiness of intoxication. ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn

... ready to carry the thing through, and then I put the pipe to my lips. I felt at once that it was opium, of which I had before made experiment, but mixed with some other substance, which was, I imagine, haschish, a preparation of hemp. A few puffs, and I felt a drowsiness creeping over me. I saw, as through a mist, the fakir swaying himself backwards and forwards, his arms waving, and his face distorted. Another minute, and the pipe slipped from my fingers, and I fell ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty

... they were hiding, and in that silence they unconsciously drew nearer to each other. The delicious aroma of the hay overcame their spirits with a drowsiness. New sensations thronged on Bobby's spirit, made receptive by the narcotic influences of the tepid air, the mysterious dimness, the wands of gold, the floating brief dust-motes. He wanted to touch Celia; and he found ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... Eventually, drowsiness began to steal over me, and proved a feeling hard to resist. Yet still with an effort did I contrive to recall the beautiful prayers of Saints Makari Veliki, Chrysostom, and Damarkin, while at the same time something resembling ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... in my chair with the object of resting a few minutes before starting homewards. But, whether owing to the spirit I had swallowed, or to the heavy exertion I had undergone, or merely because of my intense mental fatigue, I felt drowsiness overcoming me so rapidly that I perceived it would never do for me to give way to it. Pulling myself together I rose to my feet, at the same time thrusting my hand into my pocket for the money to pay for my drink. The mere act of rising, ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster

... of the horses' feet lulled the tired child into blissful drowsiness. He had had too many ups and downs in his eleven years of life to be alarmed at this unexpected turn of fortune, and he was still too young to grasp how great a change had been wrought in that life since the hot hour he had spent lying by the ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... night was a good one, and in the absence of Flood, no one felt like going to bed until drowsiness compelled us. So we lounged around the fire smoking the hours away, and in spite of the admonition of our foreman, told stories far into the night. During the early portion of the evening, dog stories occupied the boards. As the evening wore on, the ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... the laird learned to understand how the catholics come to pray to their saints, and the Chinese to their parents and ancestors; for he frequently found himself, more especially as drowsiness began to steal upon his praying soul, seeming to hold council with his wife concerning their boy, and asking her help towards such strength for him as human beings may minister to ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... against the rugged beach, casting off from time to time little flashes of phosphorescent light, and mirroring in their depths the hardly distinguishable outline of the Southern Cross. The salt smell of the sea was tinged with the spice-laden air of the near coast. Drowsiness came over me. I picked up a musket and paced around the little plateau. The moon had but just reached its zenith, making all objects easily discernible. The smooth storm-swept space before me reflected back its rays like a well-scrubbed quarter-deck; ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman

... Blanka demanded nothing further, except a glass of water, and then begged Aaron to tell her some more stories, to which she listened with her chin resting in her hand and her eyelids now and then drooping with drowsiness, despite the interest she took in the narrator's ingenious farrago of fact and fiction, of ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai

... cracking of the burning thorns and the hissing of flames which illumined the overhanging rocks forming a semi-circle. The moon did not shine into the depths of the ravine, but above twinkled a swarm of unknown stars. The air became so cool that Stas shook off his drowsiness and began to worry whether the chill would not ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... is (in our case at any rate) more insidious than the familiar disease of spring. Spring fever impels us to get out in the country; to seize a knotted cudgel and a pouchful of tobacco and agitate our limbs over the landscape. But the drowsiness of autumn is a lethargy in the true sense of that word—a forgetfulness. A forgetfulness of past discontents and future joys; a forgetfulness of toil that is gone and leisure to come; a mere breathing ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... aloofness was staring dumbly at the pair opposite while the low-spoken words sank into his drowsiness. Jude was primitive. Actions were things to him; things that admitted of no shades of meaning. What the two were saying in no way modified the situation. Gaston's hand was caressing his wife—his woman, Jude would have expressed it—and the ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... escape, was very careful not to disturb her. After nodding, however, for a minute'or two, with her eyes half-closed, the unquiet and restless spirit of her malady again assailed Madge. She raised her head, and spoke, but with a lowered tone, which was again gradually overcome by drowsiness, to which the fatigue of a day's journey on horseback had probably given unwonted occasion,—"I dinna ken what makes me sae sleepy—I amaist never sleep till my bonny Lady Moon gangs till her bed—mair by token, when she's at the full, ye ken, rowing aboon us yonder in ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... local uneasiness—less disposition to drowsiness; but decidedly more troubled with cardialgia, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... body, not being used to it, ached all over; sitting on the terrace in the evening, I would suddenly fall asleep and they would all laugh at me. They would wake me up and make me sit down to supper. I would be overcome with drowsiness and in a stupor saw lights, faces, plates, and heard voices without understanding what they were saying. And I used to get up early in the morning and take my scythe, or go to the school ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff

... judgment to come, or only conscious of a movement of dislike! But how foolish this is! If a man builds a house on a volcano, is it not kind to tell him that the lava is creeping over the side? Is it not kind to wake, even violently, a traveller who has fallen asleep on the snow, before drowsiness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... not for the low, monotonous hum of the water, which invited slumber. The entrance was partially hidden by numberless white and red poppies, which Mother Night had gathered and planted there, and from the juice of which she extracts drowsiness, which she scatters in liquid drops all over the earth, as soon as the sun-god has sunk to rest. In the centre of the cave stands a couch of blackest ebony, with a bed of down, over which is laid a coverlet of sable ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... seated myself upon the floor and closed my eyes. When I opened them my head had steadied itself somewhat, but I was oppressed by a curious feeling of drowsiness, ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... But drowsiness was fast closing the eyes of poor Cato, and, as the last chance, we compelled him to walk about, despite his piteous prayers for repose. It soon became evident that our labour was thrown away, for he dropped heavily down from between the two men who were supporting him, and no power could induce ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... about birds;" and hearing this Dunyazad said to her sister, "I have never seen the Sultan light at heart all this while till the present night, and his pleasure garreth me hope that the issue for thee with him may be a happy issue." Then drowsiness overcame the Sultan, so he slept;[FN129]—And Shahrazad perceived the approach of day and ceased saying her ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... To prevent drowsiness, to beguile the time, he looks back to his past experience, and the prison became his Patmos—the gate of heaven—a Bethel, in which his time was occupied in writing for the benefit of his fellow-Christians. He looks back upon all the wondrous ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... worse on arising than on going to bed, is its distinguishing mark. Sleep, which should remove the fatigue of the day, does not; the victim takes half of his day to get going; and at night, when he should have the delicious drowsiness of bedtime, he is wide-awake and disinclined to go to bed or sleep. This fatigue enters into all functions of the mind and body. Fatigue of mind brings about lack of concentration, an inattention; and this brings about an inefficiency that worries the patient beyond ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... that's why you followed Annie Bragin till everybody in the married quarters laughed at you,' said I, remembering that unhallowed wooing and casting off the disguise of drowsiness. ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... doses at that, "for the soul," "to banish the grief which blunteth the heart," to arouse religious exultation and enliven his social intercourse with his fellow believers. Yet the consequences were equally sad. For the habit resulted in drowsiness of thought, idleness and economic ruin, insensibility to the outside world and to the social movements of the age, as well as in stolid opposition to cultural progress in general. It must be borne in mind that during the era of external oppression and military inquisition the ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... she lavished upon me, I was bored to death in that hospital. My friend and I, we had reached that degree of brutishness that throws you on your bed, trying to kill in animal drowsiness the long hours of insupportable days. The only distractions offered us consisted in a breakfast and a dinner composed of boiled beef, watermelon, prunes, and a finger of wine—the whole of not sufficient ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans

... pleasures every hour they find, The warmth more precious, and the shelter kind; Warmth that long reigning bids the eyelids close, As through the blood its balmy influence goes, When the cheer'd heart forgets fatigues and cares, And drowsiness alone ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield

... everlasting, if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination: and remember this too, that we do not perceive that many things which are disagreeable to us are the same as pain, such as excessive drowsiness, and the being scorched by heat, and the having no appetite. When then thou art discontented about any of these things, say to thyself that thou art yielding ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

... over their eyes and stretched out under the shadow of the trees that came down almost to the water's edge. A brooding peace enveloped them, and the droning of insects and the faint lapping of the water on the shore lulled them into drowsiness. ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield

... coal, was snoring like a lay clerk asleep in the sun; and the heat was very great. Auguste, who had taken charge of the lard melting in the pots, was watching over it in a state of perspiration, and Quenu wiped his brow with his sleeve whilst waiting for the blood to mix. A drowsiness such as follows gross feeding, an atmosphere heavy with ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... rang for bed-candles. Robinson staggered with drowsiness. Meadows eyed them from ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... Coryndon's vigil outside the lonely house by the river was dull and grey, with a woolly sky and a tepid stillness that hung like a tangible weight in the air. Its drowsiness affected even the native quarter, but it in no way lessened the bustle of preparations for departure on the part of Coryndon, who ordered Shiraz to pack enough clothes for a short journey, and to hold himself in readiness to leave with his master shortly after ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie



Words linked to "Drowsiness" :   somnolence, temporary state, wakefulness, drowsy, oscitancy, oscitance



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