dozy

adjectiveB22 meaningsVery rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechleans spokeninformal · an editor’s judgement

Dozy means sleepy and slow to react. The warm, heavy feeling that arrives after a large lunch.

It comes from doze, to sleep lightly, and it keeps that softness: a dozy afternoon, a dozy cat in a sunny window. British English adds a second and sharper sense, where calling somebody dozy means slow-witted — mild as insults go, but an insult all the same. Which meaning lands depends entirely on tone. If you only mean sleepy and want no risk of the other, drowsy is the safe word.

Definitions of dozy

1adjectivedozySleepy and only half awake.B2
“The heat made everyone dozy.”
synonyms: drowsy
2adjectiveslowSlow-witted or not paying attention.C1
“You dozy thing, you have put it on backwards.”

Where it comes from

From doze + -y.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 39 of A Man Called Ove.

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