fall asleep

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English

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Pronunciation

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Verb

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fall asleep (third-person singular simple present falls asleep, present participle falling asleep, simple past fell asleep, past participle fallen asleep)

  1. To pass from a state of wakefulness into sleep.
    • 1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider []”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, [], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter II (Burglary), page 378, column 1:
      She wakened in sharp panic, bewildered by the grotesquerie of some half-remembered dream in contrast with the harshness of inclement fact, drowsily realizing that since she had fallen asleep it had come on to rain smartly out of a shrouded sky.
  2. (idiomatic, figurative) To be affected by paresthesia; to go numb.
    My left leg has fallen asleep!
  3. (poetic, euphemistic) To die (often seen on gravestones).

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