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sleep-eater n. A person who eats while asleep. Also: sleep eater, sleepeater.
sleep-eat v.
sleep-eating pp.

Example Citations:
I am a sleep-eater.

It has happened only a few times, and I'm not sure if it's connected to Ambien. It started last year when a jumbo pack of Oreos mysteriously went missing in my kitchen. I came down one morning to find the plastic sliced open and all the cookies gone.
—Maureen Dowd, "Valley of the Rolls," The New York Times, March 18, 2006

I stood up then and said, "My name is Gary and I may have eaten too much but I am not an abusive parent." Of course they accused me of being in denial, but I'm not. I'm a recovering sleep eater, and if you are too, I look forward to meeting you on my book tour. It's called "A Bed Full of Bread Crumbs," and I trace my sleep eating to the sinus problem, which was aggravated by the three years I spent in prison for dangling my son from a hotel balcony. (I was asleep at the time.) That's in the book too.
—Garrison Keillor, "The next book tour: The things you eat when you're asleep!," Tulsa World, February 15, 2006

Earliest Citation:
[We] have had separate bedrooms for many years and we love it. She is a night owl, and I am an early-to-bedder. She snores, I sleep lightly. Besides, she is a sleep-eater. One time she woke up with a container of cheese spread next to her bed with a hunting knife sticking out of it.
—Laura Kavesh and Cheryl Lavin, "Coping with your sleepmate, whether near or far," Chicago Tribune, June 21, 1989

Related Words:
grazing
passive overeating
sleep hygiene
sleepdriving

Subject Categories:
Culture - Food and Drink
Science - Psychology
Sociology - People
Sociology - Sleeping

Posted on March 20, 2006 at 6:00 AM


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