According to statistics, sleep problems are the scourge of half of humanity. There are many helpful tips on how to avoid them. For example, ventilate the room at night, do not drink alcohol at bedtime, do not read or use electronic devices, because light suppresses the sleep hormone melatonin.
And try not to puzzle over tricky tasks. You fell asleep or fell asleep, it does not matter. If only I got up on an alarm, rested.
The opinion of scientists
A branch of the science of language that studies words and morphemes (significant parts of words) is called morphology, and specialists in it are linguistic morphologists. In their authoritative opinion, these two concepts, “fell asleep” and “fell asleep,” are unambiguous. The difference, however, does exist. And it is concluded in almost imperceptible shades of meanings.
Both words have prefixes. Both “y-” and “za-” mean the same thing: the completion of an action.
Going to sleep means falling asleep. That is, the action is complete, it is exhausted. The meaning of the word focuses on the fact that the previously started process of falling asleep has ended.
At the same time, falling into a dream is indicated by the word "fall asleep." But a man who has fallen asleep is someone who has already plunged deeply into the kingdom of Morpheus. The dream itself actually lasts, and not just “diving” into it, as in the first case.
These shades are very, very subtle. We do not think at all how to fall asleep or fall asleep when we use one of these two words. And both options are correct.
What is the difference between eternal sleep and eternal
So, we have synonyms. However, these words are ambiguous. And synonymy does not exist in each of their meanings. Here are the three cases where “fall asleep” and “fall asleep” are identical:
- The little dog fell asleep by the stove. The cat fell asleep on a pillow (immersion in sleep).
- The forest fell asleep under a snow cover. Fell asleep a big city (lull, deserted).
- The fish is already asleep. Pike cast ashore quickly fell asleep (stop breathing and die, used only in the 3rd person and exclusively about fish).
However, the second verb has a couple more meanings:
- The pain will not fall asleep soon (about feelings: weakening, dullness).
- Soldiers asleep on the battlefield (die).
And in such cases, these words are not interchangeable. For example, hatred cannot fall asleep and one cannot say “fell asleep in a hospital bed” (in the sense of ending his life). The exception is the steady combination of falling asleep / falling asleep with an eternal sleep.
The first verb has an imperfect couple - fall asleep. But the word "lull" does not exist.
Where it is thin, there it breaks
There are duplicate words that indicate the redundancy of the language system. One of the identical concepts is erased from the dictionary over time. But this process is slow.
In our language, these two synonyms will exist side by side for a long time to come. So he fell asleep or fell asleep - in most cases this is not important. Moreover, scientists predict over time the disappearance of one of them. But just what, interesting?