Word of the Day: soporific

Soporific (adjective) sah-puh-RIFF-ik

Definition

1 a : causing or tending to cause sleep

b : tending to dull awareness or alertness

2 : of, relating to, or marked by sleepiness or lethargy

Examples

The soporific effects of the stuffy classroom and the lecturer’s droning voice left more than one student fighting to stay awake.

“The prose sparkles at every turn, but that’s not to say it’s without flaws. Some entire chapters … struck me as wholly soporific.” — Andrew Ervin, The Washington Post, 13 Sept. 2016

Did You Know?

“It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is ‘soporific.’ I have never felt sleepy after eating lettuces; but then I am not a rabbit.” In The Tale of the Flopsy Bunniesby Beatrix Potter, the children of Benjamin Bunny were very nearly done in by Mr. McGregor because they ate soporific lettuces that put them into a deep sleep. Their near fate can help you recall the history of soporific. The term traces to the Latin noun sopor, which means “deep sleep.” (That root is related to somnus, the Latin word for sleep and the name of the Roman god of sleep.) French speakers used sopor as the basis of soporifique, which was probably the model for the English soporific.

My Take

I hope that my posts, and especially, the ‘Word of the Day’ are not soporific. I do try to make this section interesting. What do you think? Am I succeeding or making you fall asleep or delete these without reading them?

I got started on these because I was looking for a way to give my followers something they liked while dealing with a vendor who was having difficulty distributing my posts. There were extended periods in August and September where, despite my best efforts, the posts remained undistributed to my social sites and my email followers. I needed something quick and easy to publish during the days of trouble.

For the most part, those problems are resolved, except for my email distributions. I’ve figured out, and communicated to the vendor, that during periods of high activity on the vendor’s part, my posts are caught up in some sort of ‘race’ condition between their email servers.

But I digress. Soporific is the topic. I quickly found suitable images, including the sexy bonus picture that I almost always include for those that share the posts via Twitter. If you want to see it, please share the post from my page and click any of the Twitter buttons displayed.

I love learning the different contexts of these words of the day. Do you? Please share your comments. I’m sure we would all like to read them.

Have a great day.

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