drowse

The verb is either:^[1][2]

• a back-formation from drowsy, which is attested earlier; or
• possibly from Middle English *drousen (no known attestations), from Old English drūsan, drūsian (“to droop, sink; to become feeble, inactive, low, or slow, drowse”),^[3] from Proto-Germanic *drūsijaną (“to look down; mourn”) (possibly merged with *dreusaną (“to fall”)), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰrewHs- (“to break off; to to fall down”).

The noun is derived from the verb.^[4]

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /dɹaʊz/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aʊz

drowse (third-person singular simple present drowses, present participle drowsing, simple past and past participle drowsed)

1. (transitive)
   2. To make (someone or something) heavy with drowsiness or sleepiness.
      • 1600, T[itus] Livius [i.e., Livy], “[Book XXXIX]”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Romane Historie […], London: […] Adam Islip, →OCLC, pages 1027–1028:

        Novv vvhen as vvine had drovvned and drouſed the underſtanding: vvhen the night ſeaſon, vvhen the entermingling of men and vvomen together one vvith another (and namely, they of young and tender yeeres, vvith thoſe of elder age) had cleane put out & extinguiſhed all reſpect and regard of ſhamefaſt honeſtie: there began firſt to be practiſed all ſorts of corruption, for every one had all pleaſures readie at commaundement, and his choiſe of thoſe vvhereto by nature he vvas more prone and given to luſt after.

      • 1614, [Guillaume de Salluste] Du Bartas, “Bethulia’s Rescue. The Wonder of Widowes: Honour of Wives: Mirrour of Maids. The Sixth Book.”, in Josuah Sylvester, transl., Du Bartas His Deuine Weekes and Workes […], London: […] Robert Young, published 1633, →OCLC, page 507, column 1:

        But novv the Fume of his aboundant Drink, / Drouzing his Brain, beginneth to deface / The ſvveet remembrance of her lovely Face: […]

      • 1930, Norman Lindsay, chapter 1, in Every Mother’s Son [Redheap], New York, N.Y.: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, →OCLC, section II, page 23:

        A few people were there, loitering away Sunday in their best clothes. The warmth drowsed them and replaced contentment.

   3. Followed by away: to pass (time) drowsily or in sleeping; also, to proceed (on a way) drowsily or sleepily.
      • 1873, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-day, Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company, published 1874, →OCLC:

        [T]he wary tadpole returned from exile, the bullfrog resumed his ancient song, the tranquil turtle sunned his back upon bank and log and drowsed his grateful life away as in the old sweet days of yore.

      • 1875, Robert Browning, “Part I”, in The Inn Album, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC, page 12:

        Why plague me who am pledged to home-delights? / I'm the engaged now: through whose fault but yours? / On duty. As you well know. Don't I drowse / The week away down with the Aunt and Niece? / No help: it's leisure, loneliness and love.

      • 1941, John C[unyus] Hodges, “Trinity College and Smock Alley”, in William Congreve the Man: A Biography from New Sources (General Series; XI), New York, N.Y.: Modern Language Association of America; Kraus Reprint Corporation, published 1966, →OCLC, page 25:

        [William] Congreve held fast to the Greek poets, but otherwise seems to have drowsed his way through Trinity studies.

      • 2002, Marsha Ward, The Man from Shenandoah, Bloomington, Ind.: Writers Club Press, →ISBN, page 55:

        Ida had kept him awake while he drowsed his way up the old King's Trace in eastern Missouri, feverish and weak.

      • 2006, Sarah Mayberry, Cruise Control (Harlequin Blaze; 251), Toronto, Ont.: Harlequin, →ISBN:

        They were led into a large, attractive room with twin massage beds, and welcomed by their masseurs—in Balinese tradition, he had a male masseur, Anna a female. He drowsed his way through the first half hour of the treatment, […]

   4. (figurative) To make (someone or something) dull or inactive, as if from sleepiness.
      • a. 1822 (date written), John Keats, “[Tragedies.] Otho the Great: A Tragedy in Five Acts.”, in [Horace Elisha Scudder], editor, The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats, Cambridge edition, Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], published 1899, →OCLC, Act V, scene v, pages 190–191, lines 159–161:

        Then, father, I will lead your legions forth, / Compact in steeled squares, and speared files, / And bid our trumpets speak a fell rebuke / To nations drows'd in peace!

      • 1887 November 19, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, quotee, “Literature: Memorials of Coleorton: Being Letters from Coleridge, Wordsworth and His Sister, Southey, and Sir Walter Scott to Sir George and Lady Beaumont, 1803–1834. Edited by William Knight. 2 vols. (Edinburgh, Douglas.) [book review]”, in The Athenæum: Journal of English and Foreign Literature, Science, the Fine Arts, Music and the Drama, number 3134, London: […] John Francis [...], →OCLC, page 668, column 3:

        In a letter, however, to Lady Beaumont [Margaret, wife of Sir George Beaumont, 7th Baronet] of March, 1826, there is a passage which it is interesting to compare with the 'Work without Hope' ("All nature seems at work," &c.) composed just a year later. It is a prose version of those exquisite lines, with the addition of an acknowledgment that "the spell that drowsed his soul" was of his [Coleridge's] own conjuring.

2. (intransitive)
   2. Often followed by away or off: to be drowsy or sleepy; to be half-asleep.
      • c. 1597 (date written), [William Shakespeare], The History of Henrie the Fourth; […], quarto edition, London: […] P[eter] S[hort] for Andrew Wise, […], published 1598, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii], signature G.i., recto:

        He vvas […] Seene, but vvith ſuch eie / As ſicke and blunted vvith communitie, / Affoord no extraordinary gaze, / Such as is bent on ſu[n]-like maieſtie, / VVhen it ſhines ſeldome in admiring eies, / But rather drovvzed, and hung their eie-lids dovvn, / Slept in his face, and rendred ſuch aſpect / As cloudy men vſe to their aduerſaries / Being vvith his preſence glutted, gordge, and full.

      • 1666 May 27 (date written; Gregorian calendar), Samuel Pepys, Mynors Bright, transcriber, “May 17th, 1666”, in Henry B[enjamin] Wheatley, editor, The Diary of Samuel Pepys […], volume V, London: George Bell & Sons […]; Cambridge: Deighton Bell & Co., published 1895, →OCLC, pages 293–294:

        [T]hen to my office again, where I could not hold my eyes open for an houre, but I drowsed (so little sensible I apprehend my soul is of necessity of minding business), but anon I wakened and minded my business, and did a great deale with very great pleasure, […]

      • 1667, John Milton, “Book X”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC, signature [Oo4], verso, lines 127–131:

        [T]he Cohort bright / Of vvatchful Cherubim; four faces each / Had, like a double Janus, all thir ſhape / Spangl'd vvith eyes more numerous then thoſe / Of Argus, and more vvakeful then to drouze, […]

      • 1872, Lucretius, “Book III”, in Charles Frederick Johnson, transl., On the Nature of Things. Translated into English Verse […], New York, N.Y.: De Witt C. Lent & Company, […]; London: Sampson Low, Son & Marston, →OCLC, pages 154–155:

        Yet you hold back, reluctant still to die, / Whose life itself is but a living death, / Who wearest out in sleep the most of life, / Drowsest awake, and ever dwellest in dreams, / Bearing a mind o'ercharged with idle fears, / Nor canst discern the true source of thy ills; […]

      • 1917 May, Siegfried Sassoon, “The Death-Bed”, in The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, London: William Heinemann, published January 1918, →OCLC, stanza 1, page 94:

        He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped / Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls; / Aqueous like floating rays of amber light, / Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep,— […]

   3. (figurative) To be dull or inactive, as if from sleepiness.
      • 1570, Thomas Tusser, “Comparing Good Husband with Vnthrift His Brother, the Better Descerneth the Tone from the Tother”, in A Hundrethe Good Pointes of Husbandrie, Lately Maried vnto a Hundrethe Good Points of Huswifry Newly Corrected and Amplified […], revised edition, London: […] [Henry Denham? for] Rychard Tottyl, published 1571, →OCLC, stanza 13, folio 22, verso:

        Ill huſbandry drowſeth at fortune ſo awke, / good huſbandry rowſeth him ſelfe like a hawke.

      • 1847, Alfred Tennyson, “Part II”, in The Princess: A Medley, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 40:

        Let not your prudence, dearest, drowse, or prove / The Danaïd of a leaky vase, for fear / This whole foundation ruin, and I lose / My honour, these their lives.

      • 1863, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Leamington Spa”, in Our Old Home: A Series of English Sketches, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, page 54:

        The Leam [a river in England]—the "high complectioned Leam," as [Michael] Drayton calls it—after drowsing across the principal street of the town [Leamington Spa] beneath a handsome bridge, skirts along the margin of the Garden without any perceptible flow.

      • 1902 July 21, Jack London, “Moon-face”, in Moon-face and Other Stories, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., published September 1906, →OCLC, page 5:

        Under the aching noon-day glare, when the green things drooped and the birds withdrew to the depths of the forest, and all nature drowsed, his great "Ha! ha!" and "Ho! ho!" rose up to the sky and challenged the sun.

      • 1921 May (date written), Thomas Hardy, “Meditations on a Holiday (a New Theme to an Old Folk-jingle)”, in Late Lyrics and Earlier with Many Other Verses, London: Macmillan and Co., […], published 1922, →OCLC, stanza 11, page 110:

        What!—our hoar old houses, / Where the past dead-drowses, / Nor a child or spouse is / Of our name at all?

      • 1973 July, Melville Bell Grosvenor, “Homeward with Ulysses”, in Melville Bell Grosvenor, editor, National Geographic, volume 144, number 1, Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 29, column 2:

        Now summer was nearing its end as White Mist motored up Corfu's east coast. In August the cicadas chorused, and the dusty olive trees drowsed in the sun.

• adrowse (literary)
• bedrowse
• drowsed (adjective)
• drowser
• drowsing (adjective, noun)

• drowsihead (obsolete)
• drowsihood
• drowsily
• drowsiness
• drowsy

drowse (plural drowses)

1. An act, or a state, of being drowsy or sleepy.

   in a drowse

   • 1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sixth Book”, in Aurora Leigh, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1857, →OCLC, page 250:

     He saw his mother's face, accepting it / In change for heaven itself, with such a smile / As might have been learnt there,—never moved, / But smiled on, in a drowse of ecstasy, / So happy (half with her and half with heaven) / He could not have the trouble to be stirred, / But smiled and lay there.

   • 1859, Alfred Tennyson, “Enid”, in Idylls of the King, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], →OCLC, page 60:

     On a sudden, many a voice along the street, / And heel against the pavement echoing, burst / Their drowze; […]

2. (figurative) A state of dullness or inactivity, as if from sleepiness.
   • 1862, Coventry Patmore, “Felix Vaughan to Honoria Vaughan”, in [The Angel in the House]: The Victories of Love, book IV, Boston, Mass.: T. O. H. P. Burnham, →OCLC, pages 51–52:

     Here, in this latest August dawn, / By windows opening on the lawn, / Where shadows yet are sharp with night, / And sunshine seems asleep, though bright; / And, further on, the wealthy wheat / Bends in a golden drowse, how sweet / To sit, and cast my careless looks / Around my walls of well-read books, […]

• somnolence on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• Dowers, Sowder, dowers, dowser, sworde, wordes, worsed