Mind & EmotionGreek → English
Hypnopompic
/ˌhɪpnəˈpɒmpɪk/adjective
Belonging to the half-waking state as a person surfaces from sleep.
The Greek roots
ὕπνος
hýpnos
sleep
πομπή
pompḗ
a sending, procession
Literally: “sending sleep away”
The story of the word
F. W. H. Myers built the word as the mirror of hypnagogic, which covers the images that arrive on the way down. His covers the ones on the way up: the voice calling your name, the figure at the end of the bed, the ringing phone that was never ringing. Pompē was the formal procession that carried offerings to a temple, and it is also where pomp comes from. Sleep paralysis almost always lands in this window.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- early 20th century
Same family
hypnosishypnagogicpsychopomppomp
In a sentence
The figure in the doorway was a hypnopompic hallucination, gone the moment she sat up.