sleep

n 1: a natural and periodic state of rest during which

consciousness of the world is suspended; "he didn't get

enough sleep last night"; "calm as a child in dreamless

slumber" [syn: {slumber}]

2: a torpid state resembling sleep

3: a period of time spent sleeping; "he felt better after a

little sleep"; "a brief nap" [syn: {nap}]

4: euphemisms for death (based on an analogy between lying in a

bed and in a tomb); "she was laid to rest beside her

husband"; "they had to put their family pet to sleep"

[syn: {rest}, {eternal rest}, {eternal sleep}, {quietus}]

v 1: be asleep [syn: {kip}, {slumber}, {log Z's}, {catch some Z's}]

[ant: {wake}]

2: be able to accommodate for sleeping; "This tent sleeps six

people"

sleep

1. To relinquish a claim (of a process on a

{multitasking} system) for service; to indicate to the

scheduler that a process may be deactivated until some given

event occurs or a specified time delay elapses.

2. In jargon, used very similarly to v. {block}; also in

"sleep on", synonym with "block on". Often used to indicate

that the speaker has relinquished a demand for resources until

some (possibly unspecified) external event: "They can't get

the fix I've been asking for into the next release, so I'm

going to sleep on it until the release, then start hassling

them again."

3. To go into partial deactivation to save power.

[{Jargon File}]

(1997-11-23)