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🇺🇸 Mocking Joe Biden 😴 A drowsy person
Sleepy Joe

Sleepy Joe

9.1
A person who often falls asleep or looks drowsy
  • noun
  • Offensive
translation icon : dormilón
  • Everyone in the office started calling him Sleepy Joe after he nodded off during meetings.

Examples

  • The teacher jokingly named the student Sleepy Joe for falling asleep in class again.

  • My friend often calls me Sleepy Joe because I nap too much.

  • After staying up all night, I was the Sleepy Joe of our breakfast group.

  • Don't be such a Sleepy Joe at the meeting!

  • After he struggled to keep his eyes open during the movie, everyone started calling him Sleepy Joe.

  • Since he always dozed off during our study sessions, they affectionately dubbed him Sleepy Joe.

  • At the family reunion, he was jokingly referred to as Sleepy Joe when he fell asleep on the couch.

Synonyms

sleepyhead
vsSleepy Joe
  • Informal
18 4.1

A person who is often sleepy and slow to get up in the morning

is a colloquial nickname with sometimes insulting tone for frequent drowsiness

Antonyms

awake
24 2.0

Aware of what is happening and ready to respond

How Sleepy

asleep
∞ 1.0
sleepy
142 1.0
Sleepy Joe
  • Offensive
9.1
drowsy
22 2.7
alert
82 2.8

Surface Forms

Sleepy Joe singular
Sleepy Joes plural

Morphology

sleepy + Joe

The phrase is compositionally transparent: 'sleepy' (drowsy/lacking energy) applied to the name 'Joe' straightforwardly yields an insulting nickname meaning a Joe perceived as slow or lacking alertness. While it carries specific political connotations referring to Joe Biden, the basic sense is directly inferable by a B1 learner who knows both words and understands adjective + name constructions.

Etymology

Sleepy Joe comes from putting sleepy, which means 'tired', together with the common name Joe, making an image of a man who keeps dozing off. So it is used to call someone who often looks drowsy or falls asleep.