English edit

Verb edit

fall asleep (third-person singular simple present falls asleep, present participle falling asleep, simple past fell asleep, past participle fallen asleep)

  1. To pass from a state of wakefulness into sleep.
    • 1914, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter II, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915, →OCLC:
      She wakened in sharp panic, bewildered by the grotesquerie of some half-remembered dream in contrast with the harshness of inclement fact, drowsily realising that since she had fallen asleep it had come on to rain smartly out of a shrouded sky.
  2. (idiomatic, figurative) To be affected by paresthesia; to go numb.
    My left leg has fallen asleep!
  3. (poetic, euphemistic) To die (often seen on gravestones).

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