to put to sleep
26
2.5
- phrasal verb
- Baby Talk
- Mrs. Flemming had fed and put Pearl to sleep.
- put to sleep the baby
- put to sleep at night
- put to sleep the kid
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Watch on YouTubeAnd I hope this puts you to sleep or helps relax you.
- And I hope this puts you to sleep or helps relax you.
- Like high reps with isolation stuff put me to sleep.
- And the movement of the baby gently, you know, makes the thing bounce a little bit and puts him back to sleep.
- So this is going to put me to sleep too because it has melatonin in it.
Examples
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I'm gonna put you back to sleep now.
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Used to put the children to sleep.
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Managed to put the entire class to sleep.
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This guy used to put me to sleep when I was a kid.
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I just put him to sleep for a while.
Fiction book (1995) -
Let me tell you how my mom puts me to sleep.
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I'll put the girls to sleep.
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I'm putting my little one to sleep.
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I wanted to wake little Alex in the mornings, then put him to sleep at night.
Fiction book (2002) -
If you sing a lullaby, it can help put the baby to sleep peacefully.
Synonyms
1
3.9
To make someone fall asleep
Antonyms
How Sleepy
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'place into a low-power or inactive state' is directly derivable from combining 'put' (bring something into a state) with 'sleep' (a state of inactivity/rest) and fits the common English pattern 'put X to Y' meaning 'cause X to enter Y'. Although the phrase can have a different idiomatic sense (e.g., euthanasia) in other contexts, the device-related sense is a straightforward metaphorical extension of the literal constituents and would be understandable to a B1 learner who knows the words.
Etymology
Put to sleep comes from the simple image of an adult gently placing a child in bed or rocking them until they fall asleep. That's why the phrase means 'to help someone go to bed and fall asleep'.