There’s an English word for “sleep during daytime”: nap. But is there a word for “a period of nighttime wakefulness,” aside from spelling nap backwards as pan? The French have a lovely word for this state, dorveille, a portmanteau of dormir, “sleep” and veiller, “wake.” After coming across references in journals and other historical documents to first sleep followed by a period of wakefulness, followed by second sleep, historian Roger Ekirch made a cross-cultural study of the phenomenon, which formed the basis of his fascinating book, At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past (Bookshop|Amazon). Other terms involving phases of sleep include the rare English word semisomnous, or “half-asleep,” and hypnopompic, describing “the process of waking.” In Japanese, uto-uto denotes “the process of falling into a light sleep.” This is part of a complete episode.
When you’re talking about the location of an inanimate object, is it okay to say that it lives there, as in The peanut butter lives in that cabinet or The flashlight lives on that shelf? Strictly speaking, of course, that object isn’t...
Sean in Oneonta, New York, says that when he was growing up in New Jersey, his family would pile in the car and set off on a surprise adventure, whether a short distance or long, and the kids would be told only that they were going on Buxtehude...
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