seven sleepers
[tr. L. septem dormientes.]
Seven youths of Ephesus said to have hidden in a cave during the Decian persecution and to have slept there for several hundred years.
| c 1000 ælfric Saints' Lives (1881) I. 488 Her efne on-ginð þæra eadiᵹra seofon slæpera ðrowung. c 1310 Leg. Saints (MS. Ashm. 43) lf. 122 b, Seue sleparis. 1387 Trevisa Higden (Rolls) VII. 221 Þe array of þe sevene slepers. c 1450 Godstow Reg. 19 Make us to study þe seuen slepars. 1599 Nashe Lenten Stuffe Wks. 1905 III. 163 The forty yeares vndermeale of the seauen sleepers. 1641 Milton Prel. Episc. Wks. 1851 III. 77 The seven Sleepers, that slept..three hundred seaventy, and two years. 1781 Gibbon Decl. & F. xxxiii. (1787) III. 350 The memorable fable of the Seven Sleepers. 1831 Carlyle Sart. Res. i. iv, A peal of laughter, enough to have awakened the Seven Sleepers! |
b. Hence sing. seven-sleeper: allusively, one who has been asleep for years; dial. a dormouse or other hibernating (or migrating) animal. [So G. siebenschläfer.]
| 1671 Glanvill Further Discov. M. Stubbe 30, I thought there was something in 't, that you now publish him for a Seven Sleeper, that knows not the Transactions of the Learned World. 1837 Carlyle Fr. Rev. II. iii. i, But in seasons of Revolution..your miraculous Seven-sleeper might, with miracle enough, awake sooner. 1873 W. P. Williams & Jones Somerset Gloss., Seven-sleeper, dormouse. 1899 H. C. Hart in Phil. Soc. Trans. 13 Seven sleepers. The summer migrants supposed to sleep through the Winter. |