Word of the Day Archive
Monday December 3, 2007
soporific \sop-uh-RIF-ik; soh-puh-\
, adjective:
1. Causing sleep; tending to cause sleep.
2. Of, relating to, or characterized by sleepiness or lethargy.
noun:
1. A medicine, drug, plant, or other agent that has the quality of inducing sleep; a narcotic.
Hamilton's voice droned on, hypnotic, soporific, the gloom beyond the windows like the backdrop of a waking dream.
-- T. Coraghessan Boyle, Riven Rock
They were almost an hour behind in their daily schedule, and both women looked tired after a soporific afternoon of three executive meetings.
-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, News of a Kidnapping
Happily, these three lullaby books offer the sort of comforting bedtime soporific that has delivered generations of children, young and older, into deep, safe slumber.
-- Lisa Shea, New York Times, January 30, 1994
Soporific is from French soporifique, from Latin sopor, "a heavy sleep" + -ficus, "-fic," from facere, "to make."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for soporific
