Word of the Day: somniculous

What's "the word I'm thinking of"? Today, it's...

somniculous (adjective)

Sleepy or drowsy

"She soon went to sleep, but dreamt of distresses and vexations, of exertions demanded, and powers not to be excited; of falling from precipices, of painful adieus, and of boats foundering in shoreless waters, and was haunted by all the train of somniculous misery, which the superstitious resolve into causes, and the less weak into effects."
--Laetitia Matilda Hawkins, The Countess and Gertrude (1812)

I sometimes get that falling feeling when I'm about to go to sleep. (I suppose that's where the phrase "falling asleep" comes from.) It probably has to do with some somniculous lizard part of my brain suddenly realizing that my body is horizontal instead of vertical.

~~~

The wait is almost over! I'm very close now to publishing in book form a collection of these musings about weird words. It's a blog-to-book DIY project, and the layout work has been nightmarish, even using a template, because it's composed of so many small text blocks, rather than running text, as with a novel. Then too, life has been hectic recently, personally and professionally. Why does everything have to happen at once?