A Word for a Period of Nighttime Wakefulness?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Patty Adams.

Hi, Patty. Where are you calling from?

San Diego, California.

Well, hello, neighbor. What’s on your mind?

Hi. I was thinking about the lack of a word. I can’t find a word for that period of sleeplessness in the middle of the night that I find more and more people complain about. You are up for awake for a couple of hours in the middle of the night. And I was just thinking about it in the middle of the night as to why there isn’t a word for it. You know, like when you take a nap during the day, you are in a period of sleepfulness. But when you are awake in the middle of the night, you’re just awake. There’s no word for it. And I thought the only people that would know the answer to this question would be you guys.

Hopefully. We’ll find out.

Yeah, my first instinct is just to flip nap around and call it a pan, but that doesn’t really work.

100%, that was mine as well.

Yeah, but it just means too many other things, right?

Exactly.

Oh, that’s so great. I like that. I never thought of that. But I’m thrilled that you asked about this because I am obsessed with sleep. I mean, I think of sleep as one of my hobbies, and I’m fascinated with when people go to sleep and when they wake up and if they’re awake during the night. And I’m wondering, you mentioned complaining about that period. Does it happen to you every night?

Almost every night. I happen to really love that period because, for me, it’s a period of what’s been described as non-anxious wakefulness. I think especially for people who are writers or creative, sometimes that’s just sort of an almost hypnotic period of time when you just lie there and you think creatively. And the French have a lovely word for that. It’s dorvé, which means wake sleep. It comes from the same roots as dormitory and reveille, sleep and wake. Dorve, which is D-O-R-V-E-I-L-L-E, Dorve. And it refers to that period of time when you’re just sort of awake and maybe you’re thinking. But what I would recommend to you is a wonderful book by a guy who’s a professor of history at Virginia Tech. His name is Roger Eckrich. And he was studying public records of pre-industrial Europe. And he started seeing all these references to first and second sleep, first sleep and second sleep. And then he started looking around. It turns out there’s an Italian term for this. And he looked around even more. And there were all these records in Africa, in the Middle East, in South Asia, in Latin America, where people were talking about the first sleep and the second sleep. And then there’s this period of time in between, you know, before we had electric lights and all that, when people would get up and just do stuff. Ben Franklin liked to stand in front of the window naked during that period of time and take a cold air bath.

Yeah.

So I don’t know if you want to try that. But, I mean, do you just lie there and think the whole time? Or did you think about getting up? And I don’t know.

No, I’m single. So generally what I do is turn on the TV and find something that is kind of mindless.

Yeah.

Right. Not hard on TV. So, Martha, the faire d’orveil to make yourself, to become wakeful or to sleep or doze or to drowse is really good. But we still don’t really have a noun in English for that period between first and second sleep. I really like your idea of pan. Now, there is an adjective, semi-sominus, which means half asleep. And there’s a medical term, hypnopopic, which describes that semi-wakefulness period between sleep and full consciousness. But that’s still not, it’s an adjective, and it’s still not describing the time period. I start describing you, your own mental state. And then there’s Japanese utouto or utsura utura, which is about fluctuating between being awake and being asleep. I really recommend this book by Roger Eckrich about it. It’s called At Days Closed, Night in Times Past. It’s about the history of sleep, and it’s really fascinating. Maybe you could get up in the middle of the night and read it.

That sounds like a good idea. At Days Closed, okay. I don’t know that we’ve named that period between the first and second sleep, but it must be encouraging to know that many other people have that.

Indeed. And it’s interesting that it would actually have a word in other languages. So I think we should keep researching it. Take care of yourself, Patty.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Okay.