slumbery

• slombry, slumbry (obsolete)

From Middle English slumbry, slombry, slomry, equivalent to slumber +‎ -y. Cognate with Middle Dutch slumerich (“slumbery”).

slumbery (comparative more slumbery, superlative most slumbery)

1. Inclined to sleep; sleepy or sleeping; (by extension) quiet and slow-paced.

   Synonym: slumberous

   • 1387–1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, “(please specify the story)”, in The Canterbury Tales, [Westminster: William Caxton, published 1478], →OCLC; republished in [William Thynne], editor, The Workes of Geffray Chaucer Newlye Printed, […], [London]: […] [Richard Grafton for] Iohn Reynes […], 1542, →OCLC:

     thanne wexeth he slough and slombry and soone wol be wrooth […]

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     In that same covert whereas lay / Faire Chrysogone in slombry traunce whilere […]

   • 1820, The London Magazine, volume 1, page 405:

     Only the upper part of her body is awake, and even that droops with a slumbery weakness.

   • 2014, Suzanne Hoos, Only Time Will Tell:

     “Yes, miss. He found you outside on the portico. You were wet and cold and all slumbery.” “Slumbery?” Susannah scrunched her nose at the sound of the word. “Asleep, miss. He couldn't wake you.” Colleen took Susannah's hand.

   • 2014, Marion Meade, The Unruly Life of Woody Allen:

     In the summer of 1981, shortly before the filming of A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, Mia fell in love with a sixty-acre farm, Frog Hollow, on the outskirts of Bridgewater, Connecticut, a slumbery country town of 1,600, boasting a post office, a general store, and a gas station, as well as a bank and library.

   • 2021, Dike Okoro, Lupenga Mphande: Eco-Critical Poet and Political Activist, page 186:

     There are also the calamitous events of bushfires all over the continent, and the title of my first poetry collection, Crackle at Midnight, reflects this anxiety as it speaks to the jolting disruption of a raging fire that invades a slumbery community in the heart of rural Malawi, leaving its inhabitants covered in a green pall of toxic haze.

• See Thesaurus:sleepy

• Brumleys