Sleepy Joe
1
9.1
- noun
- Offensive
- Everyone in the office started calling him Sleepy Joe after he nodded off during meetings.
Examples
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The teacher jokingly named the student Sleepy Joe for falling asleep in class again.
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My friend often calls me Sleepy Joe because I nap too much.
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After staying up all night, I was the Sleepy Joe of our breakfast group.
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Don't be such a Sleepy Joe at the meeting!
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After he struggled to keep his eyes open during the movie, everyone started calling him Sleepy Joe.
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Since he always dozed off during our study sessions, they affectionately dubbed him Sleepy Joe.
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At the family reunion, he was jokingly referred to as Sleepy Joe when he fell asleep on the couch.
Synonyms
14
4.1
A person who is often sleepy and slow to get up in the morning
Antonyms
How Sleepy
Surface Forms
Morphology
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.