somnambulize

English

Alternative forms

• somnambulise

Etymology

From Latin somnus (“sleep”) + ambulo (“I walk”), +‎ -ize.

Verb

somnambulize (third-person singular simple present somnambulizes, present participle somnambulizing, simple past and past participle somnambulized)

1. To sleepwalk; to somnambulate.
   • 1847, Thomas Medwin, The life of Percy Bysshe Shelley: in 2 vol - Volume 1, page 34:

     If, however, he ceased at that time to somnambulize, he was given to waking dreams, a sort of lethargy and abstraction that became habitual to him, and after the accès was over, his eyes flashed, his lips quivered, his voice was tremulous with emotion, a sort of ecstacy came over him, and he talked more like a spirit or an angel than a human being.

   • 1872, Edmund H. Sears, The Fourth Gospel The Heart Of Christ, page 88:

     If a German who had acquired English should somnambulize, he would inevitably fall back upon the speech which he learned from his mother's lips, and to which his organs and his interior thought had always been attuned.

   • 2015, Markus Iseli, Thomas De Quincey and the Cognitive Unconscious:

     The mind is conscious of its own activity even if the person is not. It is constantly active and traces of its activity will most likely remain stored, even if people who dream or somnambulize are not aware of it when fully awake.

2. To put into a sleeplike or trancelike state.
   • 1967, Parke Godwin, A Biography of William Cullen Bryant:

     Physicians somnambulize their patients and extract teeth literally without pain.

   • 1990, George T. Martin, Social policy in the welfare state, page 177:

     First, the development of antipsychotic, neuroleptic drugs enabled medicine to stabilize (or somnambulize) mental patients outside the confines of institutions.

   • 1993, Accident Reconstruction: Technology and Animation, page 257:

     Prolonged testimony from an expert witness using scientific abstractions and complex fact patterns will somnambulize most jurors.