FluentPlex

sleeper

/ˈsliːpə(ɹ)/ noun B2
  1. Someone who sleeps. · I'm a light sleeper: I get woken up by the smallest of sounds.· She's a heavy sleeper: it takes a lot to wake her up.
  2. That which lies dormant, as a law.
  3. A spy, saboteur, or terrorist who lives unobtrusively in a community until activated by a prearranged signal; may be part of a sleeper cell.
  4. A small starter earring, worn to prevent a piercing from closing.
  5. A railway sleeping car. · We spent a night on an uncomfortable sleeper between Athens and Vienna.
  6. A sleeper hold.
  7. Something that achieves unexpected success after an interval of time. · A box-office bomb when it first came out, the film was a sleeper, becoming much more popular decades after being released.
  8. Any member of the family Odontobutidae of goby-like bottom-feeding freshwater fish.

Plural sleepers

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From the library

Now it is well known that when there are many of these flowers together their odor is so powerful that anyone who breathes it falls asleep, and if the sleeper is not carried away from the scent of the flowers, he sleeps on and on forever.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, p. 49 · B2
I am a light sleeper, and it has awakened me.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, p. 43 · B2
Rikki-tikki woke up with a jump, for the mongooses are light sleepers.
The Jungle Book, p. 84 · B2
They say that away down in the village, and even in the distant parsonage, that cry raised the sleepers from their beds.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, p. 66 · B2

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Words, meanings, pronunciations and translations from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); how common each word is from wordfreq. Made into this dictionary by FluentPlex.