To take the repose or rest which is afforded by a suspension of the voluntary exercise of the bodily functions and the natural suspension, complete or partial, of consciousness; slumber. See the noun.To fall asleep; go to sleep; slumber.To lie or remain dormant; remain inactive or unused; be latent; be or appear quiet or quiescent; repose quietly: as, the sword sleeps in the scabbard.To rest, as in the grave; lie buried.To be careless, remiss, inattentive, or unconcerned; live thoughtlessly or carelessly; take things easy.In botany, to assume a state, as regards vegetable functions, analogous to the sleeping of animals. See sleep, n., 5.To be or become numb through stoppage of the circulation: said of parts of the body. See asleep.Synonyms andDrowse, Doze, Slumber, Sleep, nap, rest, repose. The first four words express the stages from full consciousness to full unconsciousness in sleep. Sleep is the standard or general word. Drowse expresses that state of heaviness when one does not quite surrender to sleep. Doze expresses the endeavor to take a sort of waking nap. Slumber has largely lost its earlier sense of the light beginning of sleep, and is now more often an elevated or poetical word for sleep.To take rest in: with a cognate object, and therefore transitive in form only: as, to sleep the sleep that knows no waking.With away: To pass or consume in sleeping: as, to sleep away the hours; to sleep away one's life.With off or out: To get rid of or overcome by sleeping; recover from during sleep: as, to sleep off a headache or a debauch.To afford or provide sleeping-accommodation for: as, a car or cabin that can sleep thirty persons.n. A state of general marked quiescence of voluntary and conscious (as well as many involuntary and unconscious) functions, alternating more or less regularly with periods of activity.n. A period of sleep: as, a short sleep.n. Repose; rest; quiet; dormancy; hence, the rest of the grave; death.n. Specifically, in zoology, the protracted and profound dormancy or torpidity into which various animals fall periodically at certain seasons of the year.n. In botany, nyctitropism, or the sleep-movement of plants, a condition brought about in the foliar or floral organs of certain plants, in which they assume at nightfall, or just before, positions unlike those which they have maintained during the day.