SLEEPLESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does sleepless mean? 

• SLEEPLESS (adjective)
  The adjective SLEEPLESS has 2 senses:

1. experiencing or accompanied by sleeplessness

2. always watchful

  Familiarity information: SLEEPLESS used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SLEEPLESS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Experiencing or accompanied by sleeplessness

Synonyms:

insomniac; sleepless; watchful

Context example:

twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights

Similar:

awake (not in a state of sleep; completely conscious)

Derivation:

sleeplessness (a temporary state in which you are unable (or unwilling) to sleep)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Always watchful

Synonyms:

lidless; sleepless

Context example:

to an eye like mine, a lidless watcher of the public weal

Similar:

alert; watchful (engaged in or accustomed to close observation)

 Context examples 

He told me that for days and nights past—weary days and sleepless nights—he had been unable to speak with any one, as a man must speak in his time of sorrow.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

It would have spared her, she thought, one sleepless night out of two.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

“It may give him a sleepless night. He will find it as sure a precursor of his fate as Openshaw did before him.”

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Then it was that in my despair and disappointment, after a sleepless night, I came straight to you by the early train.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

That she had been bewildered when questioned by the market-woman was not surprising, since she had passed a sleepless night and the fate of poor William was yet uncertain.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

You may have experienced sleepless nights when you were anxious, stressed or too excited.

(The Secret Connection between Anxiety, Sleep, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

It was seven o’clock when I awoke, and I set off at once for Phelps’s room, to find him haggard and spent after a sleepless night.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I both wished and feared to see Mr. Rochester on the day which followed this sleepless night: I wanted to hear his voice again, yet feared to meet his eye.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

That good creature—I mean Peggotty—all untired by her late anxieties and sleepless nights, was at her brother's, where she meant to stay till morning.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Oh! Catherine, the many sleepless nights I have had on your brother's account!

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)