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Drowsy   /drˈaʊzi/   Listen
Drowsy

adjective
(compar. drowsier; superl. drowsiest)
1.
Half asleep.  Synonyms: dozy, drowsing.  "It seemed a pity to disturb the drowsing (or dozing) professor" , "A tired dozy child" , "The nodding (or napping) grandmother in her rocking chair"
2.
Showing lack of attention or boredom.  Synonyms: oscitant, yawning.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Drowsy" Quotes from Famous Books



... were frequent. And little pellets of hail were thickening the air. And over the tarpaulin that covered her the ice was making. Sailin' by the wind, 'tis terrible cold. She was becoming drowsy—hard work to keep from falling asleep. Good enough for her—ay, good enough, her father would say—dancin' half the night and carryin' messages to ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly

... current of things is far from musical, and the issues greatly disappointing. The drowsy Justice which we expect and wish to see awakened, and set in living harmony with Mercy, apparently relapses at last into a deeper sleep than ever. Our loyalty to Womanhood is not a little wounded by the humiliations ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... nor the warm sky; his consciousness began to throb again, on the very instant, with a sense of his wrong. He got out of the train half an hour before it reached Geneva, in the cold morning twilight, at the station indicated in Valentin's telegram. A drowsy station-master was on the platform with a lantern, and the hood of his overcoat over his head, and near him stood a gentleman who advanced to meet Newman. This personage was a man of forty, with a tall lean figure, a sallow ...
— The American • Henry James

... the dramas of AEschylus, for at Fontainebleau where he spent some later weeks of the year these were the special subject of his study. It was at Saint-Aubin in 1872 that he found the materials for his poem of the following year, and to Miss Thackeray's drowsy name for ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... a day in June when David believed he never in this world could get through with it. He heard the chuck and drowsy clack of the sprinkling-wagon as it ponderously advanced upon its lazy way; he heard the almost whispered clucking of a mother-hen who was calling her chicks to come shuffle with her in the cool loose earth under the shade of the crooked old apple-tree, and ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott

... loveliest thing in the world. They sat down in two old straight-backed kitchen chairs. They still held each other by the hand, and looked in each other's face. The plain old room was aglow with heat and cheerfulness; the tea-kettle was singing; a drowsy cat sat on the wood-box with her paws tucked in; and the house dog came forward in a friendly way, wagging his tail, and laid his head on their ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... recovered consciousness, when again I heard groans, mingled with half-stifled cries, as if from persons engaged in a deadly struggle. A cry more prolonged than the others and ending in a series of groans effectually roused me from my drowsy lethargy. Hastily raising myself on one arm, I looked around, but all was dark; and it seemed to me as if the rain must have penetrated through the flooring of the room above, for some kind of moisture appeared to fall, drop by drop, upon my forehead, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... ghastly rides, he came Home to his heart, and found from thence 560 Much stolen of its accustomed flame; His thoughts grew weak, drowsy, and ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... of all ladies who are admired for their beauty, my charming mistress, whom I carried off on your wedding-day, and have loved so constantly ever since, let me sleep a few moments by you; for I found myself so very drowsy that I came to this place to take a little rest." Having spoken thus, he laid down his huge head upon the lady's knees, and stretching out his legs, which reached as far as the sea, he fell asleep presently, and snored so loud that he ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... wake until past nine o'clock, and found a lighted candle on her table; her poor landlady had been up perhaps more than once to visit her. She felt greatly refreshed; the danger, if there had been any, was over now, but she was still drowsy—so drowsy that she longed to be asleep again; and she only got up to undress and go to bed in a more regular way. The time to think had not come yet; sleep alone seemed sweet to her, and in its loving arms she would lie, for it seemed like ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... to feel very drowsy and drifted into a vague wonder at the thought of growing old. "I wonder what it feels like. I suppose one takes no more interest in anything; it can't matter what one's secret bread is. But mine, of course, mine is Cloom...." And on that ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... frescoes and practises magnetism, there is yet another Wagner who hoards small treasures: our greatest melancholic in music, full of side glances, loving speeches, and words of comfort, in which no one ever forestalled him,—the tone-master of melancholy and drowsy happiness.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} A lexicon of Wagner's most intimate phrases—a host of short fragments of from five to fifteen bars each, of music which nobody knows.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Wagner had the ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... mountain and stream, An' troubles the hallowed breath of my dream. The gowd light of morning is sweet to the e'e, But ghost-gathering midnight, thou'rt dearer to me. The dull common world then sinks from my sight, And fairer creations arise to the night; When drowsy oppression has sleep-sealed my e'e, Then bright are the ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thy happiness,— That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... of the jaded mules, and feeling much happier on our doeskin saddles, we went along gaily for some distance, but the extreme cold and our own weariness soon began to tell, and we became so drowsy that we determined to off-saddle at the next inn. We had reckoned, however, without our host, for the inn was crammed full and we were obliged to take to the road once more, and that in no very amiable frame of mind. The next inn was if anything more crowded still, and the next, and the next. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... less blue than the sky. So the journey is like sailing through alternate tracts of light irradiate heavens, and interstellar spaces of the clearest and most flawless ether. The air is like the keen air of the highest glaciers. As we go, the bells keep up a drowsy tinkling at the horse's head. The whole landscape is transfigured—lifted high up out of commonplaceness. The little hills are Monte Rosas and Mont Blancs. Scale is annihilated, and nothing tells but form. There ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... and cankered disposition this," said he one night, when sitting by the ingle with his drowsy helpmate, watching the sputtering billets devoured, one after another, by the ravening flame: "'Tis an ill-natured disposition that is abroad, I say, that will neither let a man go about his own business, nor grant him a few honest junkets these ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... Italians, a handsome young hussar, spoke to her. She could not know what he said; but when he crossed over to her side of the carriage, she rose and took her place beside Veronica, where she remained even after he left the carriage. She was sensible of growing drowsy. Then she was aware of nothing till she woke up with her head on Veronica's shoulder, against which she had fallen, and on which she had been patiently supported for hours. "Ecco Venezia!" cried the old woman, pointing to a swarm of lights that seemed to float upon an expanse ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells

... the company were, Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Desmoulins, and Mr. Lowe. He seemed not to be well, talked little, grew drowsy soon after dinner, and retired, upon which I ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... towards the garden-paling, and took a look at the dahlias. They looked over at him, with a helpless drowsy hanging of their heads: which bobbed again, as the heavy drops ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens

... it was quite dark in the room except for the light from the open fire. She could hear in the sitting-room a subdued murmur of voices, and now and then Irving's giggle, promptly suppressed by the stern Molly. As she lay there in drowsy comfort Melina stole into the room and coming softly to the bed peered ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick

... the three youths were set up in housekeeping. To these services the konohiki, through his attendants, added still others; some chewed and strained the awa, while others cooked and spread for them a bountiful repast. The three youths ate and drank, and under the drowsy influence of the awa they slept until the little birds that peopled the wilderness about them waked them with their morning songs; then they roused and found the sun already ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... drowsy, Her wings are furled: Her ear is heavy, She broods on the world. Who'll tell me my secret, The ages have kept?— I awaited the seer, ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... its plain white walls and floor of brick. The other alcove is occupied by a writing-table, where sits, intent on the employment that consumes by far the greater portion of his time, the potent monarch of Spain, the "most pious and most prudent" Philip the Second. A drowsy secretary, who waits for the completion of the document which he is to copy, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... princes of that day could foresee, why this state of things should not continue indefinitely; and it would be a long story to say just why it did not continue. What every one knows is that the French revolution took place, that armies of French democrats overran all these languid lordships and drowsy despotisms, and awakened their subjects, more or less willingly or unwillingly, to a sense of the rights of man, as Frenchmen understood them, and to the approach of the nineteenth century. The whole of Italy ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... the bard, "So let it knell! 345 And let the drowsy sacristan Still count as slowly as he can! There is no lack of such, I ween, As well fill up the space between. In Langdale Pike and Witch's Lair, 350 And Dungeon-ghyll so foully rent, With ropes of rock and bells of air Three sinful sextons' ghosts ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... With her paint-brush Spring is seen,— In the valley, by the rillside, All the earth is decked with green. Once again the sun beguiles Moves the drowsy world to smiles. See! the sun, with mother-kiss Wakes her child ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld

... land! Not a sound in all those peaceful expanses of grass and woods but the drowsy hum of insects; no glimpse of man or beast; nothing to keep up your spirits and make you glad to be alive. And so, at last, in the early part of the afternoon, when I caught sight of a human creature, I felt a most grateful uplift. This person ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... ye: You'll win!" I cries—"Now then, my dear!" All at once I feels fairly silly; Then I comes over right down queer. I dig my knees into her girths, sir; I let the reins go—then I fall Back faint, and dizzy, and drowsy— "Painted Lady" sweeps on past them all. She can't make out what's a happenin', Flies on—maddened, scared with fright— And wins—by how far? well, don't know, sir, But the rest hadn't come in sight. I was took from the saddle, lifeless; I've heard as they ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... Maker according to its lights. I have a friend, a poet, who lives just off the Strand, and spends his evenings at the Garrick Club. He writes occasional verse for the evening papers, and talks about the "silent country, drowsy with the weight of languors." One of these times I'll lure him down for a Saturday to Monday and let him find out what the country really is—let him hear it. He is becoming too much of a dreamer: it will do him good, wake him up a bit. The corncrake ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... I was getting drowsy and that was the last I heard. In the morning we found a small pail of milk sitting near us, a roasted partridge, two fried fish and some boiled potatoes. It was more than enough to carry us through the day with a fair allowance for ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... his instructions. Before I had finished rubbing his head he was drowsy, and when I took the vial from his nostrils he was sound asleep. I placed the precious thing where he had told me, and arranged his limbs on the cushions. Then I opened everything, and leaving the servant in ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... dainty Bacchus gross in taste; For valour, is not love a Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides? Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical, As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair; And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony. Never durst poet touch a pen to write, Until his ink were tempered with love's sighs; Oh, then his lines would ravish savage ears, And plant in tyrants mild humility. From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: They ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... as we have seen, by Wolsey; and these had been assiduously exiled or imprisoned. All suspected books had been hunted out. There had been fagot processions in High-street, and bonfires of New Testaments at Carfax. The daily chapels, we suppose, had gone forward as usual, and the drowsy lectures on the Schoolmen; while "towardly young men" who were venturing stealthily into the perilous heresy of Greek, were eyed askance by the authorities, and taught to tremble at their temerity. All this we might have ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... down, checked up or running free, until her round, fat face seemed ready to burst, and it became necessary to explain to her that she had arrived at wherever she was going and must stand hitched in the shade till she cooled off. It was a drowsy occupation that summer afternoon. She was presently sitting down—as much as a horse can sit down—and just a little later was stretched among the long grass and clover, forgetful of check-rein and ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... catch the import of this peroration. Its sound alone reached him like an echo from far away. He was unaccountably drowsy. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... is a frightful deafening discord to a sense incapable of discrimination, for one who can hear the parts may break into a celestial chorus. A musical education is necessary for musical judgment. What most people relish is hardly music; it is rather a drowsy revery relieved ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... rainbow drawn On Lammermuir. Hearkening I heard again In my precipitous city beaten bells Winnow the keen sea wind. And here afar, Intent on my own race and place, I wrote. Take thou the writing: thine it is. For who Burnished the sword, blew on the drowsy coal, Held still the target higher, chary of praise And prodigal of counsel - who but thou? So now, in the end, if this the least be good, If any deed be done, if any fire Burn in the imperfect page, the ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... not already come many a long mile. I lay half-reclining in the cart, holding the reins lazily, and allowing the animal to go just where he pleased, often wondering where he would conduct me. At length I felt drowsy, and my head sank upon my breast; I soon aroused myself, but it was only to doze again; this occurred several times. Opening my eyes after a doze somewhat longer than the others, I found that the drizzling ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... worst that could befall, while still the best Shone a fair star far off: and mid the rest This brought her after all her grief and fear, She said, "How sweet it would be, could I hear, Soft music mate the drowsy afternoon, And drown awhile the bees' sad murmuring tune Within these flowering limes." E'en as she spoke, A sweet-voiced choir of unknown unseen folk Singing to words that match the sense of these Hushed the faint ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris

... first drowsy glance fell upon the flickering light of the lantern, the second upon a huge pear, which, yellow as a rising moon, lay at his bedside. In dazed, joyous astonishment he grasped it, but on raising it to his lips noticed that it was stained with blood. He was startled, thought he was still ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... mess-room there were the quarters of nearly three hundred men. But once in a while something like a whisper came from the jungle, suggesting the passing through its dense tangle of some prey-seeking, cat-like creature. But no one spoke; though, in a half-drowsy way, those seated by the window and a couple of dark figures outside in the veranda were straining their ears and trying to make out what caused the distant sounds. ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... faithful historian, Diedrich Knickerbocker; and here he picked up many of those legends which were given by him to the world. One of these was the legend connected with the old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow. "A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say the place was bewitched by a high German doctor during the early days of the settlement; others that an old Indian ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... will think of my stroll homeward past Charlecote Park, where I beheld the most stately elms, singly, in clumps, and in groves, scattered all about in the sunniest, shadiest, sleepiest fashion; so that I could not but believe in a lengthened, loitering, drowsy enjoyment which these trees must have in their existence. Diffused over slow-paced centuries, it need not be keen nor bubble into thrills and ecstasies, like the momentary delights of short-lived human ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... of thy sad and beautiful lays; for if thy bees gathered much honey 'twas somewhat bitter to taste, like that of the Sardinian yews. How clearly we see the great hall, the grey lady spinning and humming among her drowsy maids, and how they waken at the word, and she sees her spring in their eyes, and they forecast their winter in her face, when she murmurs "'Twas Ronsard sang ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... and with tears in her eyes, proceeded to pour out, from a memory richly stored with Scripture, those blessed words it is full of, words that in our hours of ease or biblical criticism pass over the mind like some drowsy chime but in the bitter day of anguish and bereavement, when the body is racked, the soul darkened, shine out like stars to the mariner; seem then first to swell to their real size and meaning, and come to writhing mortals like pitying ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... leaves, his anger diminished as he watched with drowsy delight the sun-patterns stroking. And his eyes must ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse

... only a month or two after the birth of William Junior. Susan had not been to Sausalito for a long time, and Mrs. Carroll was ending a day's shopping with a call on mother and babies. Martin, drowsy and contented, was in her arms. Susan, luxuriating in an hour's idleness and gossip, sat near the open window, with the tiny Billy. Outside, a gusty August wind was sweeping chaff and papers before it; passers-by dodged it as if it ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... make me try, By sleeping, what it is to die! And as gently lay my head On my grave, as now my bed. Howe'er I rest, great God, let me Awake again at last with thee. And thus assured, behold I lie Securely, or to wake or die. These are my drowsy days; in vain I do now wake to sleep again: Oh come that hour, when I shall never Sleep again, but wake ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... and played hard that day. When Lucile was wakened at one o'clock in the morning, she found herself unspeakably drowsy. A brisk walk to the beach and back, then a dash of cold spring water on her face, ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell

... had lain there, curled up under the bows of the "Dreadnought" that stormy Christmas morning, I never knew. For I, like him, had succumbed to the drowsy influence of the cold and ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... prisoner. This the lady Nerralina volunteered to do. Waiting until the dead of night, she took off her slippers, and with the scarf-rope rolled up into a ball under her arm, she silently stepped past the drowsy sentinels, and, reaching the Prince's room, pushed open the door, and the stool fell down and knocked her head off. Her body lay in the doorway, but her head rolled into the middle of ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton

... to the young girl, who was sitting on a fallen Hermes by the road-side. Her vigorous and lively temperament rendered her little apt to dream, or even meditate, in broad daylight; but the heat and the recent excitement had overwrought her and she felt into a drowsy reverie. Now and again, as her heavy head drooped on her breast, she fancied the Serapeum had actually fallen; then, as she raised it again, she recovered her consciousness that it was hot, that she had lost her home, and that she must, however ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... day or two beside the lake when, one drowsy afternoon, Kinnaird, who sat on the hot, white shingle by the water's edge, with a pair of glasses in his hand, sent for Weston. Miss Kinnaird and Ida Stirling were seated among ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... sky the sun Half his daily task has done; We will rest beside the spring, While the bird with folded wing Sits within his cool retreat, Shaded from the noontide heat, And the bees, with drowsy hum, Homeward, honey-laden come. ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson

... of an unrivalled zeal to decorate his country. He is a great builder, he has filled Munich with fine edifices, and called in the aid of talents from every part of Europe, to stir up the flame, if it is to be found among his drowsy nation. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... the sun were falling aslant as she stepped out, and the western sky was aglow with crimson and purple and pink. It was a drowsy world, with sounds grown distant and the perfume and color of the flowers grown nearer. At the door of the inn, which, looked as if it must have been standing right there in the days of dashing ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... drowsy point of land, stretching out into the unbroken emerald green of Lake Superior, at the point where a narrow, yellowish river offers its tribute. The King of Lakes is exclusive; he disdains to blend his brilliant waters with those ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... with sullen roar; Or, if the air will not permit, Some still removed place will fit, Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom; Far from all resort of mirth, Save the cricket on the hearth, Or the bellman's drowsy charm To bless the doors from nightly harm. Or let my lamp at midnight hour Be seen in some high lonely tower, Where I may oft out-watch the Bear, With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere The spirit of Plato, to unfold What worlds or what vast regions hold The immortal ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... 't By dropping many a friendly hint At Astrabad, you see. But ah, They feared the news might reach the Shah! To prove the will the lawyers bore 't Before the Kadi's awful court, Who nodded, when he heard it read, Confirmingly his drowsy head, Nor thought, his sleepiness so great, Himself to gobble the estate. "I give," the dead had writ, "my all To Meerza Solyman Zingall Of Ispahan. With this estate I might quite easily create Ten thousand ingrates, but I shun Temptation and create but one, ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... the next morning, the robin in the nest above Mary's window stretched out his left wing, opened one eye, and gave a short and rather drowsy chirp, which broke up his night's rest and restored him to the full consciousness that he was a bird with wings and feathers, with a large apple-tree to live in, and all heaven for an estate,—and so, on these fortunate premises, he broke ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... noon, when the heat made even the desert and the men of the desert drowsy, he allowed his imagination to roam freely, counting the thousand dollars over and over again, and tasting again the joys of a double salary. Yet even his hardy imagination rarely rose to the height of ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... where he sat a lonely music, borne on fantastic chords, floated to the group about the tea-table. Under its influence Madame de Chantelle's meditative pauses increased in length and frequency, and Effie stretched herself on the hearth, her drowsy head against the dog. Presently her nurse appeared, and Anna rose at the same time. "Stop a minute in my sitting-room on your way up," she paused to say to ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... the Miller's Wife, pouring herself out a large glass of warm ale; 'really I feel quite drowsy. It is just like being ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde

... a small room. She had not been awake when he came up, but had been half-aroused, as usually happened, when the light was switched on in her husband's room. She had spoken to him. She had no clear recollection of what she had said, as she had been very drowsy at the time; but she had remembered that he had been out for a moonlight run in the car, and she believed she had asked whether he had had a good run, and what time it was. She had asked what the time was because she felt as if ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... the glorious sky when the sun rises. I like everything about the country, and the people that live in it. The town is artificial, the country is natural. Whoever sees the peep of the morning in the city but a drowsy watchman, who waits for it to go to his bed? a nurse, that is counting the heavy hours, and longs to put out the unsnuffed candles, and take a cup of strong tea to keep her peepers open; or some houseless wretch, that is woke up from his nap on a door-step, by a punch ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... leading to the house; he followed close behind her. He was silent, for he found not a word to say. A drowsy feeling of uneasy languor came over him; he asked himself whether he could overtake her, or whether she were a ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... to warn them night and day with tears." I cannot impress it too strongly on every young minister that the delivery of his sermon is half the battle. Why load your gun at all if you cannot send your charge to the mark? Many a discourse containing much valuable thought has fallen dead on drowsy ears when it might have produced great effect if the preacher had only had inspiration and perspiration. A sermon that is but ordinary as a production may have an extraordinary effect by direct and fervid delivery. The minister who never warms himself will never warm up his congregation. ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... then, will ye dally, with your music and your wine? Up! it is Jehovah's rally; God's own arm hath need of thine; Hark! the onset! will ye fold your faith-clad arms in lazy lock? Up! O up, thou drowsy soldier! Worlds ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... fire after the wind and cold of the day made us very drowsy. We fought off sleep, however, and at last in came stalking the biggest chief of all Alaska, clothed in his robe of state, which was an elegant chinchilla blanket; and upon its yellow surface, as the chief slowly turned about to show ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young

... the divine Providence to suffer the holy Church to be afflicted, as we see it, with so many storms and troubles, by this opposition to rouse pious souls, and to awaken them from that drowsy lethargy wherein, by so long tranquillity, they had been immerged. If we should lay the loss we have sustained in the number of those who have gone astray, in the balance against the benefit we have had by being again put in breath, and by having ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... that his questions were 'mere confused hints,' which required all kinds of answers, but mostly the answer 'No, not at all.' Then, however, came Maurice's own answers to them. About this time his hearer used to become drowsy, with 'an indistinct consciousness of a pathetic quavering set of entreaties to believe what, when it was intelligible, was quite unsatisfactory.' Long afterwards he says somewhere that it was 'like watching the struggles of a drowning creed.' Fitzjames, however, fancied ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... along through a book, sentence by sentence, putting in a mark conscientiously where they left off to-day, so as to begin at the self-same spot to-morrow; fast readers, who gallop through a book, as you would ride a flying bicycle on a race; drowsy readers, to whom a book is only a covert apology for a nap, and who pretend to be reading Macaulay or Herbert Spencer only to dream between the leaves; sensitive readers, who cannot abide the least noise or interruption when ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... pause for a moment, and suddenly lurch down, but now the sea was long and regular, the motion was rhythmic. Besides, the thud and gurgle of water outside the boat's thin planks were soothing and harmonized with the measured beat of the screw. Jake got drowsy and although he had meant to take another bearing when he thought he could double the angle, presently ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss

... on the wall struck twelve. A moment later, the little clock on the mantel jinglingly endorsed the sentiment. Then, save for the drowsy droning of the bees among the blossoms outside the open windows, there was no ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... few indeed among the living slept; We lay upon our arms and courted sleep With open eyes and ears: the fears and hopes That centered in the half-fought battle held The balm of slumber from our weary limbs. Anon the rattle of the random fire Broke on our drowsy ears and startled us, As one is startled by some horrid dream; Whereat old veterans muttered in ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... steep and stony, through the old streets of Mentone, Quiet, half-forgotten city of a drowsy prince and time, Through the mild Italian midnight, rolls upon the wave the moonlight, Murmuring in our dreams the cadence of a strange Ligurian rhyme,— Rhymes in which each heart is sharer, Journeying on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... drowsy, hazy days of so-called Indian Summer. It was the season of threshing, and all day long to the drowse of the air was added, near and afar, all-pervading through the stillness, the sleepy hum of the separator. Typical voice of the prairie was that busy drone, penetrating ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... puzzled his drowsy faculties why Kate had sent for him. Was it to bid him good by forever, or to lessen his misery by telling him she would not marry another? He soon gave up cudgelling his enfeebled brains. Kate was a superior being to him, and often said things, and did things, that surprised him. She had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... was a hot-box on the next car, and that not only were we late, but we were delaying the second section, just behind. I was beginning to feel pleasantly drowsy, and the air was growing cooler as we got into the mountains. I said good night to the brakeman and went back to my berth. To my surprise, lower ten was already occupied—a suit-case projected from beneath, a pair of shoes stood on the floor, and from behind the curtains came the heavy, unmistakable ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... seeing that some was swallowed by the sister who had been unwillingly roused from the sleep she had willingly offered to forego overnight, collecting cloaks, baskets, and travelling-rugs, and altogether looking so wakeful and ready that she wellnigh drove her drowsy sister to desperation. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... sir Raph, stirring so soon indeed? Birlady, sir, rest would have done right well; Our riding late last night has made me drowsy. Go to, go to, those days are gone ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare

... elm, and there a stroke From ashen neck has whirl'd a head of oak. So drops from either power, with vengeance big, A remnant night-cap and an old cut wig; Titles unmusical retorted round, On either ear with leaden vengeance sound; Till equal valour, equal wounds create, And drowsy peace concludes the fell debate; Sleep in her woollen mantle wraps the pair, And sheds her poppies on the ambient air; Intoxication flies, as fury fled, On rooky pinions quits the aching head; Returning reason cools ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe

... action of his political candidate, and his big newspaper hid the two young people by the fire, so that he quite forgot them. Max seemed to feel that the responsibility of propriety rested upon him, and he sat with his head on Lois's knee, and his drowsy eyes blinking at Mr. Forsythe. His mistress pulled his silky ears gently, or knotted them behind his head, giving him a curiously astonished and grieved look, as though he felt she trifled with his dignity; yet he did not move his head, ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland

... till you see it tomorrow—or next day," said the uncle, vaguely. He closed his eyes, and welcomed a drowsy mood. As he went off to sleep, the jolting racket of the train mellowed itself into a murmur of "tomorrow or next day, tomorrow or next ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... settled down upon the comfortable mattress and had pulled the covers up to his chin. He said to himself that he would sleep a little while and early in the morning hurry up to the school. A pleasant feeling of relaxation stole over him, his thoughts merged into drowsy half-dreams and almost immediately he sank into a slumber deeper than any he ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst

... with solemn interposing puff, Makes half a sentence at a time enough; The dozing sages drop the drowsy strain, Then pause and puff, and speak, and pause again. Such often, like the tube they so admire, Important triflers! have more smoke than fire. Pernicious weed! whose scent the fair annoys, Unfriendly to society's chief joys, Thy worst ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various

... reflections Abraham soon grew drowsy. Tess was not skilful in the management of a horse, but she thought that she could take upon herself the entire conduct of the load for the present and allow Abraham to go to sleep if he wished to do so. She made him ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... rush, according to its habit, and covered with bubbles, and froth, and furrows, even where it did not splash, and spout, and leap, as it loved to do. In the depth of the night, when even the roar of the water seemed drowsy and indolent, and the calm trees stooped with their heavy limbs over-changing the darkness languidly, and only a few rays of the moon, like the fluttering of a silver bird, moved in and out the mesh-work, I leaned upon, my elbow, and I saw the ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... has joined her own enchanting voice to theirs, while she has sat in the flowery meads, mingled with the Sirens and the Water Nymphs, gathering their potent herbs and drugs of magic quality: their singing altogether has made the gods stoop, and "heaven drowsy with ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB

... so quickly that the soldiers, being drowsy with their all-night ride, scarcely understood what was going forward. The officer himself strove to unwrap the muffled cloak that he might grasp his sword, puffing out his cheeks with amazement and indignation meanwhile, and staring down fiercely at Mr. Stewart. ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... thief, shrink from the sight of other people, and lie instinctively. Fine distinctions were not in uncle Wellington's line, but he was struck by the unreasonableness of his feelings, and still more by the discomfort they caused him. By and by, however, the motion of the train made him drowsy; his thoughts all ran together in confusion; and he fell asleep with his head on his valise, and one hand in his pocket, clasped tightly around the roll ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... sweet spirit, my genius? 'Slid, I shall love Apollo and the mad Thespian girls the better, while I live, for this, my dear Fury; now, I see there's some love in thee. Sirrah, these be the two I writ to thee of: nay, what a drowsy humour is this now! why ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson

... Therefore, about the inevitable hour of one o'clock, in the dark, there was a loud and ominous crack and jerk from the rope, and I knew too well the cause. In the rainy night it was a troublesome business to arrange matters, and next day was a drowsy one with me, spent in the strange old ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... long evening by the fire, in the drowsy silence of the big drawing-room, Rachael felt her eyes grow heavy. Who was unhappy, who was happy—what was all life ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... hotel, the dirty flap of canvas, the unoccupied road, the dull prairie sweeping away to the horizon, all composed a hideous picture beneath the sun glare. He could scarcely find a man to attend his horse, and at the restaurant a drowsy Chinaman had to be shaken awake, and frightened into serving him. He sat down to the miserable meal oppressed with disgust—never before had his life seemed so mean, useless, utterly ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... making him promise not to leave the inn till he had seen him again, withdrew also to the repose of his pillow. Clifford remained below, gazing abstractedly on the fire for some time afterwards; nor was it till the drowsy chambermaid had thrice informed him of the prepared comforts of his bed, that he adjourned to his chamber. Even then it seems that sleep did not visit his eyelids; for a wealthy grazier, who lay in the room below, complained bitterly the next morning of some person walking overhead ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... was still long. The pilgrims reach the Enchanted Ground and are drowsy and tired. Ignorance comes up with them again. He talks much about himself. He tells them of the good motives that come into his mind and comfort him as he walks. His heart tells him that he has left all for God and Heaven. His belief and his ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... an immense effort I managed to raise my eyelids. I was lying in a bed, and caught a drowsy, fleeting ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... dazed as Minnie Plympton bundled me into a passing electric car; and then, with my head leaning comfortably on Minnie Plympton's plump shoulder, and with Minnie Plympton's strong arm about my aching body, I was jolted away somewhere into a drowsy happiness. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... chuckled, and Dick resumed his drowsy brooding and sullen rebellion against fate. He had long since ceased to think about the work he had done in the old days, and the desire to do more work had departed from him. He was exceedingly sorry for himself, and the completeness of his tender grief soothed ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... of Wabasso, 220 To the land of the White Rabbit, Hearing still the gusty laughter, Hearing Shingebis, the diver, Singing, "O Kabibonokka, You are but my fellow-mortal!" 225 Shawondasee, fat and lazy,— Had his dwelling far to southward, In the drowsy, dreamy sunshine, In the never-ending Summer. He it was who sent the wood-birds, 230 Sent the Opechee, the robin, Sent the bluebird, the Owaissa, Sent the Shawshaw, sent the swallow, Sent the wild-goose, Wawa, northward, ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... for all their royal name. The Canterbury-bells may be chiming velvet peals down in their dark cathedrals, but no clash nor clangor nor faintest echo ripples up into my Garden World. Not a bee drones his drowsy song among the flowers, for there are no flowers there. One venturesome little phlox dared the cold winds, and popped up his audacious head, but his pale, puny face shows how near he is to being frozen to death. The poor birds are shivering in their nests. They sing a little, just to keep ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... Shushan! After Eden, all terrace, pool, and flower recollect thee: Ye weavers in saffron and haze and Tyrian purple, Tell yet what range in color wakes the eye; Sorcerer, release the dreams born here when Drowsy, shifting palm-shade enspells the brain; And sound! ye with harp and flute ne'er essay Before these star-noted birds escaped from paradise awhile to Stir all dark, and dear, and passionate desire, till mine Arms go out to be mocked by ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... we could not detect the slightest vestige of human dwellings or cultivation. We did not even observe any signs of bird or beast. A profound stillness brooded over the solitude, and was scarcely broken by the drowsy ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... two to that effect to the men, but they didn't pay much attention to my caution, all being tired out and the majority falling asleep as soon as they drank their allowance, without waiting to see the next served out even, they were so drowsy. ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson

... of inquiry, therefore, the Two Idle Apprentices drifted out resignedly into a fine, soft, close, drowsy, penetrating rain; got into the landlord's light dog-cart, and rattled off through the village for the foot of Carrock. The journey at the outset was not remarkable. The Cumberland road went up and down like all other ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... or oil, it's all the same to you! Haven't I put my lamp out long ago? Doesn't the fire on the hearth give light enough? Are your eyes so drowsy that they don't see the dawn shining in upon us more and more brightly? The olives are not yet pressed, and the old oil is getting toward the dregs. Besides, you know how much fruit those abominable thieves have stolen. But ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... into the street where there was the big house with the tower. At the great closed gates of the house, a little man stood with his shoulder leaning against them, wrapped in a grey soldier's coat, with a copper Achilles helmet on his head. He cast a drowsy and indifferent glance at Svidrigailov. His face wore that perpetual look of peevish dejection, which is so sourly printed on all faces of Jewish race without exception. They both, Svidrigailov and Achilles, stared at each other for a ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... fain be somewhat of a more tangible utility than I am; but so I suppose it is with all of us—one while cheerful, stirring, feeling in resistance nothing but a joy and a stimulus; another while drowsy, self-distrusting, prone to rest, loathing our own self-promises, withering our own hopes—our hopes, the vitality ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... murmured, "I—haven't eaten anything for some time. They put things in my food to make me drowsy, so I ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... memory of heat and red sunsets and dirty Indians and stuffy dining-cars. But Morelos itself made a more lasting impression upon her little mind. There was, first of all, the strange landscape, dominated by the snowy peak of Popocatepetl, the sugar-fields, and the drowsy languor of the little town, and then there was the family life of the Mereldas at the hacienda. That was both delightful and queer to Adelle. Instead of one "queer" person to whom she had become accustomed, ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... woe and much "soul suffering," to quote from another effusion, he read to her fragments of the "Light of Asia," which she could not in the least comprehend, but which she bluntly criticised as "not half bad to listen to if you felt drowsy." ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... fiddle-faddle; pottering &c v.; shilly-shally &c (irresolute) 605. sleeping, &c v.; asleep; fast asleep, dead asleep, sound asleep; in a sound sleep; sound as a top, dormant, comatose; in the arms of Morpheus, in the lap of Morpheus. sleepy, sleepful^; dozy^, drowsy, somnolent, torpescent^, lethargic, lethargical^; somnifacient^; statuvolent^, statuvolic^; heavy, heavy with sleep; napping; somnific^, somniferous; soporous^, soporific, soporiferous^; hypnotic; balmy, dreamy; unawakened, unawakened. sedative ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget



Words linked to "Drowsy" :   drowsiness, oscitant, inattentive, asleep, drowse, dozy, yawning



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