somnambulize

present singular third person somnambulizes · participle present somnambulizing · participle past somnambulized · past somnambulized · alternative somnambulise

1. To sleepwalk; to somnambulate.

   If a German who had acquired English should somnambulize, he would inevitably fall back upon the speech which he learned from his mother's lips, and to which his organs and his interior thought had always been attuned.

   1872, Edmund H. Sears, The Fourth Gospel The Heart Of Christ, page 88

   2 more examples

   If, however, he ceased at that time to somnambulize, he was given to waking dreams, a sort of lethargy and abstraction that became habitual to him, and after the accès was over, his eyes flashed, his lips quivered, his voice was tremulous with emotion, a sort of ecstacy came over him, and he talked more like a spirit or an angel than a human being.

   1847, Thomas Medwin, The life of Percy Bysshe Shelley: in 2 vol - Volume 1, page 34

   The mind is conscious of its own activity even if the person is not. It is constantly active and traces of its activity will most likely remain stored, even if people who dream or somnambulize are not aware of it when fully awake.

   2015, Markus Iseli, Thomas De Quincey and the Cognitive Unconscious

2. To put into a sleeplike or trancelike state.

   Physicians somnambulize their patients and extract teeth literally without pain.

   1967, Parke Godwin, A Biography of William Cullen Bryant

   2 more examples

   First, the development of antipsychotic, neuroleptic drugs enabled medicine to stabilize (or somnambulize) mental patients outside the confines of institutions.

   1990, George T. Martin, Social policy in the welfare state, page 177

   Prolonged testimony from an expert witness using scientific abstractions and complex fact patterns will somnambulize most jurors.

   1993, Accident Reconstruction: Technology and Animation, page 257