Other forms: slumbers
Slumber is sleep, in a gentle or literary sense. Deeper than a nap and softer than the word sleep.
It is old-fashioned and poetic, which is why it survives mainly in songs, hymns and the phrase a deep slumber. The verb means to sleep peacefully. A slumber party is the American name for a sleepover, which is a rare modern survival of the word. There is a figurative use about dormancy, since an industry or a volcano can slumber for years before waking.
1nounslumberSleep, especially peaceful sleep.
“The whole house was in deep slumber.”
To slumber is to keep dozing. Middle English slumen meant to doze, and slombren is its frequentative, the form for doing something over and over, from a root meaning slack or limp.
Middle English
slombren
English, today
slumber
Built from
From Middle English slombren, slomren, frequentative of Middle English slummen, slumen (“to doze”), probably from Middle English slume (“slumber”), from Old English slūma, from Proto-Germanic slūm- (“slack, loose, limp, flabby”), from Proto-Indo-European (s)lew- (“loose, limp, flabby”). Cognate with West Frisian slommerje, slûmerje (“to slumber”), Dutch sluimeren (“to slumber”), German schlummern (“to slumber, doze”), Swedish slummer (“to slumber”). by surface analysis, en + sloom + er.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA