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say it: SLEE-pur
sleeper is a noun meaning "a rester who is sleeping". It is pronounced /ˈslipɚ/ — SLEE-pur. It carries 9 recorded senses.
a spy or saboteur or terrorist planted in an enemy country who lives there as a law-abiding citizen until activated by a prearranged signal
terrorism
an unexpected achiever of success
“the winner was a true sleeper--no one expected him to get it”
one of the cross braces that support the rails on a railway track
“the British call a railroad tie a sleeper”
a passenger car that has berths for sleeping
pajamas with feet; worn by children
a piece of furniture that can be opened up into a bed
tropical fish that resembles a goby and rests quietly on the bottom in shallow water
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for sleeper come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.