sleeper

Someone who sleeps.

I'm a light sleeper: I get woken up by the smallest of sounds.

She's a heavy sleeper: it takes a lot to wake her up.

That which lies dormant, as a law.

Therefore let penal laws, if they have been sleepers of long, or if they be grown unfit for the present time, be by wise judged confined in the execution […]

The object of these provisions is to prevent insertion of "jokers" or "sleepers" in bills and securing passage under the false color of the title.

A spy, saboteur, or terrorist who lives unobtrusively in a community until activated by a prearranged signal; may be part of a sleeper cell.

We are up against the pros; and pros who have been involved in this kind of activity for many years. […] The public apathy today is disturbing — few realize, Mr. Chairman, that there are sleepers in this country and we know that they are able to manipulate at will behind the scenes.

A small starter earring, worn to prevent a piercing from closing.

His skull earring had been replaced by a small gold sleeper. […] Fiona, who also had pierced ears, remarked on his sleeper. “Doesn’t Wilton allow pierced ears?” she asked. “No way!” said Leslie. “Rules about everything. But I wanted to keep my options open, as you might say. No one’s made me take it out yet. […]”

A railway sleeping car.

We spent a night on an uncomfortable sleeper between Athens and Vienna.

It is realised that the old Pullman standard sleeper, with its convertible "sections", each containing upper and lower berths, and with no greater privacy at night than the curtains drawn along both sides of a middle aisle, has had its day.

To mark a calf by cutting its ear.

I expect there ain't a trick to maverickin' and sleeperin' and changin' a brand he don't know.

A railroad tie.

The train, minus the three abandoned trucks, again proceeded at a slow pace, with a pump trolley doing pilot ahead ; this was very necessary as a great many sleepers were found to have been burnt underneath the fishplates.

I should imagine that the smooth riding and the quietness of the diesel or electric cab, coupled with the effect on the eyes of endless successions of sleepers disappearing from sight immediately under the driver's eyes, might in time have a soporific effect, so that the company of a second man, who can assist in signal observations when he is not at work in the engine cab, seems highly desirable in such conditions.

A structural beam in a floor running perpendicular to both the joists beneath and floorboards above.

A heavy floor timber in a ship's bottom.

The lowest, or bottom, tier of casks.