somnambulism
/sɒmˈnambjʊlɪz(ə)m
/noun [mass noun]
Sleepwalking: she would have liked to wake up from her somnambulism to find herself back in bed...
- In somnambulism and somniloquy, a child sits up in bed with eyes open but is ‘unseeing.’
- They are similar to other arousal disorders that occur during deep sleep, such as somnambulism and confusional arousals.
- Further information included the fact that the patient had no history of somnambulism (sleep walking).
Derivatives
somnambulant
- As I was trolling the Internet the other night, (an addictive past-time especially for somnambulant sleuths like me), I happened upon the ‘ultimate destination for women's fiction’.
- Contemporary with early Surrealism, the people in Countries of the World remind Stezaker of the somnambulant anonymous types in paintings by de Chirico, Delvaux and Magritte.
- The Sonatina is in nine short sections, alternately eerie, fantastical, bleary, somnambulant, focussing sharply or softly as the case may be upon the tone row they all derive from.
somnambulantly
- Songs like ‘Vesuvius’ and ‘Virginia’ amble along somnambulantly, and ‘Forthright’ conjures a Gothic insomnia as Chesnutt wanders a lonely house contemplating death and hominy.
- After watching the Pope's funeral, I staggered somnambulantly towards the Commons in search of breakfast.
- Obese, and buzzing somnambulantly around a light bulb, they're easy to swat.
somnambulist
/ noun ...- Juries have reason to be skeptical, but there is plenty of scientific evidence to suggest that sleepwalkers, or somnambulists, can engage in complex behavior.
- Was the somnambulist an ‘automaton’ or what some French psychologists called an automate conscient?
- The intense bitterness eventually gave way to a melancholic paralysis in which all, save the children, became walking-wounded somnambulists lingering in dusty hallways awaiting blessed bedtime.
somnambulistic
- The central character, a Woman who works in a convenience store (played with somnambulistic perfection by Maureen Gammelseter) is the the film's central focus.
- While the British state, however reluctantly, was substantially increasing its involvement in Northern Ireland, the Irish government's approach was somnambulistic.
- Fortunately the highlights of the trip outweigh the overly somnambulistic detours, proving that it's the journey, not the destination that matters most.
somnambulistically
- You have to feel the heavyweight, soft, supple, sensual cottons and somnambulistically draping fabrics.
- Characters somnambulistically move in and out of frames, ghosts of feeling and thinking human beings.
- In one painting, for example, a stout Leger-like woman, rigid and flat in form and stultified in motion, wanders somnambulistically away from a voluptuously puffed red love seat.
Origin
Late 18th century: from French somnambulisme, from Latin somnus 'sleep' + ambulare 'to walk'.